KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander made history early Sunday morning as it touched down on the moon’s surface with 10 NASA payloads.

At around 3:25 a.m. ET, the Texas-based company’s 6.6-foot (2 meter) tall Blue Ghost autonomously touched down on the Mare Crisium (Latin for Sea of Crises), one of the dark patches on the northeastern part of the moon.

“Y’all stuck the landing. We’re on the moon,” said an engineer at mission control in Austin as the Blue Ghost team erupted in cheers that were heard during the NASA-Firefly Aerospace live feed.

On a post on X, Firefly Aerospace posted, “Firefly just became the first commercial company in history to achieve a fully successful Moon landing.”

The Blue Ghost team used the D’Souza Guidance when the lander was fully autonomous, which is a similar to the guidance that the Apollo moon missions used, the company stated on X, formerly known as Twitter.

This is Firefly’s Aerospace first Ghost Riders in the Sky moon mission, which was launched in mid-January.

Since its launch, it has taken 45 days for the mission’s Blue Ghost spacecraft to reach the moon and once it got there, it orbited the 2,159-mile (3,475 kilometer) natural satellite for 16 days before touchdown.

For the next two weeks, the 10 NASA payloads — or equipment and technology —  will be conducting their own experiments and tests.

Scroll down to learn more about these payloads.

And after that deadline is met, the Blue Ghost and its 10 little companions will succumb to the moon’s freezing nights.

Blue Ghost Chief Engineer Will Coogan said in a previous interview with Spectrum News that, “Ghost Riders in the Sky is just the first of many Firefly missions to the moon. We expect to make an annual road trip.”

Firefly Aerospace became the second commercial company to land on the moon, with the first being Intuitive Machines’ in 2024.

The Blue Ghost is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS).

As Firefly Aerospace was preparing its Blue Ghost lunar lander for its rendezvous on the moon, on Friday a NASA official spoke about the importance of the agency’s (CLPS) and going to Earth’s rocky sister.

NASA talks moon missions ahead of Firefly’s first lunar landing

On Friday morning, NASA's Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration Dr. Joel Kearns talked about how the Texas-based company’s and Intuitive Machines’ NOVA-C lunar landers are part of a new path to exploring the moon and space.

“Well, you know, CLPS is a new way to do business for NASA. Instead of building our own spacecraft or running a mission, we have contracted with American companies to hitch a ride on the missions they want to do and bring us science to the moon that way. And that's a way to try to tap into, you know, innovation and entrepreneurship and new technical approaches by U.S. companies, but also to help build a lunar economy,” he said.

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost launched in January with the goal of safely landing on the moon’s Mare Crisium.

Once there, it will test those 10 NASA payloads to learn more about the moon for 14 days before the lunar night freezes the lander.

This will be the company’s first moon mission.

Scroll down to learn more about these payloads.

In a previous story, Coogan shared what some of these payloads will be doing.

"They’ll help unlock new insights and demonstrate new technologies that are paving the way for humanity’s return to the Moon. We have payloads collecting surface samples, drilling down into the surface to measure thermal gradients, demonstrating radiation-tolerant computing, measuring the distance to the Moon with increased precision, and trying to detect GPS signals from twice as far away as has ever been demonstrated," he said.

Kearns also touched on the Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 mission’s NOVA-C lunar lander named Athena and how different companies paid to have their technologies onboard and head to the moon.

“But you know that Intuitive Machines launched on Wednesday night, and we not only have the NASA experiments and payloads that we paid in to the machines to take, but there were joint-NASA industry funded payloads that were totally commercial-funded payloads,” he said. “People were paying in Intuitive Machines to take their things to the moon again on their mission, which NASA doesn't have anything to do with. So, it's an indication that there is interest and there is a there is demand. And as you said, there's another mission flying, too. There's the Japanese commercial mission from ispace, Japan. And if you look at what they're flying, they're flying a lot of commercial things from Japan.”

Scroll down to learn more about the IM-2 payloads.

The IM-2 mission is expected to land near the moon’s South Pole at a location known as Mons Mouton on Thursday, March 6, for a 10-day mission.

Intuitive Machines made history by being the first private company to land on the moon in 2024.

Firefly Aerospace's payloads

Intuitive Machines' payloads