Focus: Moon, planetary research, spaceflight With a fully automated, picture-perfect landing, the Blue Ghost mission touched down on the morning of 2 March 2025 Central European Time (CET) in Mare Crisium, on the northeast of the Moon's near side.

Firefly Aerospace landed a craft safely last week, a first for a private company. But Intuitive Machines’ mission ended when its lander wound up on its side in a crater.

The lunar lander, called Blue Ghost, settled onto the Moon's surface at 2:34 am CST (3:34 am EST; 08:34 UTC). A few dozen engineers in Firefly's mission control room monitored real-time data streaming down from a quarter-million miles away.

The original assumption was that commercial lunar landings would be, to use a basketball term, “shots on goal” with some of them failing.