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A private company is claiming a new milestone in space exploration history. Firefly Aerospace says it's the first commercial company to execute a fully successful soft-landing on the moon. NPR's Joe Hernandez reports it's part of NASA's push to rely more on the private sector.
JOE HERNANDEZ, BYLINE: It was just past 3:30 a.m. Sunday morning when the Blue Ghost lunar lander made its final approach. The livestream of the landing showed a subdued mission control room until chief engineer Will Coogan came over the speaker to announce the craft had touched down.
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WILL COOGAN: INE (ph) reports lunar gravity, and it is stable. All coms (ph), chief engineer on ops. Y'all stuck the landing. We're on the moon.
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HERNANDEZ: The mission was part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services Initiative. The space agency has been contracting with private companies to send scientific instruments and other technology to the moon.
Dr. Nicky Fox is associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate.
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NICKY FOX: We want to build a sustainable economy - space economy - for the U.S., inspiring these U.S. companies to step forward and take on these challenges and support NASA to do great things.
HERNANDEZ: Just one year after a different American firm's lunar craft landed on the moon and then tipped over on its side, Firefly Aerospace said Sunday that Blue Ghost touched down smoothly.
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RAY ALLENSWORTH: We didn't have to abort any burns. We didn't have to recycle. We didn't have to go around the moon another time. It went extremely well.
HERNANDEZ: Ray Allensworth is spacecraft program director at the Texas-based company. She says Blue Ghost quickly got to work conducting the NASA experiments that were on board.
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ALLENSWORTH: There's no break for those console operators. We've already begun moving into surface commissioning and getting started on those payload operations.
HERNANDEZ: Among the 10 NASA payloads are a drill to measure lunar heat flow, an instrument to collect rock samples and an x-ray imager to study Earth's magnetic field.
Joe Hernandez, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN VINCENT III'S "TOPANGA CANYON") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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