The American company achieved the first successful moon landing by a private spacecraft last year. Now, it has sent a new mission to the south pole, carrying science instruments for NASA

During his tenure as associate administrator since January 2024, NASA added nearly two dozen new signatories of the Artemis Accords, enabled the first Moon landing through the agency's CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative to deliver NASA science to the lunar surface,

The space exploration firm is scheduled to launch its six-legged Nova-C moon lander, Athena, on Wednesday as part of NASA's $2.6 billion Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. Athena is scheduled to launch aboard SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The Blue Ghost spacecraft has taken its first images of the lunar surface as Firefly Aerospace and NASA celebrate a successful moon landing.

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.

Firefly Aerospace successfully reached the lunar surface, to be followed in short order by space companies Intuitive Machines and ispace.