The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) celebrated the first major success of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative on March 18 with the completion and slight extension of Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost One mission to the lunar surface.
NASA and Firefly officials touted the success as further validation of both the agency’s decision to empower the private sector and that private partner’s spacefaring work.
“I think that Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission One is what I would call an existence proof of how we wanted commercial lunar payload services to work,” Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration, science mission directorate, NASA headquarters in Washington, said during a post-mission press conference. …