Firefly Aerospace, following the historic success of Blue Ghost Mission 1, which achieved the first fully successful commercial soft landing on the Moon in early 2025, is already preparing for a new major leap. The focus is on Blue Ghost Mission 2 – a future mission to the far side of the Moon – whose massive engineering model is literally shaking, reverberating, and "baking" in NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) these months. In the same historic halls where the Voyager probes were once prepared for their journey to the edge of the Solar System, today it is being tested whether a new commercial lunar spacecraft can safely survive the journey to one of the most challenging locations on the Moon.

From Voyager to Blue Ghost: The Laboratory That Tastes the Limits of Spacecraft

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California has been the center of NASA's robotic exploration of the Solar System for decades. In its Environmental Test Laboratory (ETL) – a complex of thermal-vacuum chambers, vibration tables, and acoustic chambers – generations of spacecraft have arrived for testing: from the early Ranger and Mariner programs, through the legendary Voyager probes, all the way to the Galileo and Cassini missions and newer projects like the Mars Exploration Rover, Mars 2020 with the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter, as well as the Europa Clipper interplanetary spacecraft currently on its way to Jupiter. In the same vertical space chambers, space conditions – vacuum, extreme temperatures, and intense radiation – are reproduced today to verify the behavior of spacecraft before launch.

In these chambers, it is possible to simulate almost all phases of space travel in controlled conditions: from strong vibrations and acoustic shock during launch, through the vacuum and thermal cycles in the Earth–Moon interspace, to thermal loads and mechanical shocks upon entry into planetary or lunar atmospheres. The ETL has a series of thermal-vacuum chambers that can reach very high vacuum and temperatures from approximately –185 to +150 degrees Celsius, as well as a large acoustic chamber where speakers powered by compressed gas are used to create noise up to about 155 decibels – powerful enough to fully simulate the shock wave of a launch on the spacecraft structure.

It is precisely this combination of infrastructure and experience that makes JPL's Environmental Test Laboratory a natural partner for the new generation of commercial lunar missions. Engineers preparing Blue Ghost Mission 2 in the same halls today rely on lessons learned from projects like the Mars Exploration Rovers, Mars 2020, and a series of interplanetary missions, where they correlated laboratory results with what later happened in the actual space environment. That historical database – in which vibration responses, thermal cycles, and acoustic loads are compared – directly benefits Firefly Aerospace and its customers today.

Blue Ghost Mission 1: From Test Hall to First Fully Successful Private Landing

Firefly's first lunar lander, Blue Ghost Mission 1, went through a similar regime of environmental testing before launching on a Falcon 9 rocket in January 2025 as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Integrated with ten NASA scientific and technological instruments, the lander, after a multi-day journey and a series of orbital maneuvers, successfully landed in the Mare Crisium area, near the Mons Latreille formation on the northeastern edge of the Moon's near side, on March 2, 2025.

The landing was fully automated and took place with a live broadcast, and data released after the mission confirmed that Blue Ghost Mission 1 achieved the first fully successful commercial soft landing on the Moon: the spacecraft remained upright, all systems operated nominally, and communication was stable throughout the entire planned operational period. Reports from NASA and Firefly state that the mission met 100% of its objectives, with all ten CLPS instruments carrying out planned scientific campaigns.

During more than 14 days of surface operations – the longest commercial mission on the Moon to date – instruments collected data on regolith structure and composition, thermal behavior of lunar soil, the radiation environment, and the interaction of solar wind with the lunar surface. Spectacular scenes of sunset on the Moon and a total solar eclipse seen from Mare Crisium were also recorded, bringing scientists new insights into the behavior of lunar dust and the phenomenon of "lunar horizon glow" – a glow along the horizon associated with charged dust particles floating above the surface.

For Firefly Aerospace, this success meant more than a symbolic trophy in the new race of private missions. Blue Ghost Mission 1 demonstrated that a combination of a commercially developed lander, NASA instruments, and a Falcon 9 rocket can provide a complete service – from launch to landing and scientific operations – at a reliability level comparable to classic government missions, but at a lower cost and with a faster development cycle. It is precisely on the experiences and data from that first mission that the architecture and planning of Blue Ghost Mission 2 are being built.

Blue Ghost Mission 2: Two-Stage Architecture for the Far Side of the Moon

The second mission, Blue Ghost Mission 2, is a logical but significantly more ambitious continuation of the story. Instead of a single lander, Firefly introduces a two-stage configuration: on top is the Blue Ghost lunar lander, responsible for landing and surface operations, while below it is Elytra Dark – an orbital vehicle that takes on the role of a transfer stage, communication relay, and platform for scientific instruments in lunar orbit. In full configuration, about 6.9 meters high, the entire assembly is more than three times taller than the lander from the first mission and designed to simultaneously support operations in orbit and on the ground.

Blue Ghost Mission 2 is part of a NASA CLPS task sending key instruments for radio astronomy, geophysics, and the development of future lunar infrastructure to the far side of the Moon. The key NASA scientific payload is LuSEE-Night (Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment – Night), an advanced radio telescope developed by US national laboratories and partner institutions. Located on the naturally radio-quiet side of the Moon, LuSEE-Night plans to measure extremely low-frequency radio waves (below ~50 MHz) to study the so-called "Dark Ages" of the universe – the period before the formation of the first stars and galaxies.

In addition to NASA instruments, the mission includes a range of international and commercial payloads. Among them is the Lunar Pathfinder from the European Space Agency (ESA), a communication and navigation satellite that will provide data transmission and positioning services to future missions in the Moon's vicinity from lunar orbit. Elytra Dark, as the lower stage of the system, is tasked with delivering the Blue Ghost lander and Lunar Pathfinder satellite to appropriate orbits, and will then remain active in orbit for at least five years. During this period, it will also provide radio-frequency calibration services for LuSEE-Night and other experiments, based on a separate NASA CLPS contract.

Elytra Dark also carries optical instruments that form the core of Firefly's Ocula lunar imaging service, intended for systematic imaging of the Moon's surface in the ultraviolet and visible spectrum. The resulting images will be used to identify potential mineral deposits, precisely map future landing sites and rover routes, and for so-called cislunar situational awareness – better monitoring of spacecraft traffic near the Moon. Thanks to the two-stage architecture, Blue Ghost Mission 2 combines the role of a lander, a communication hub, and a platform for long-term observation in a single mission.

What "Shock Therapy" Looks Like for Blue Ghost in JPL's Laboratory

Before Blue Ghost Mission 2 gets the green light for launch, its engineering models must undergo a series of grueling tests in JPL's Environmental Test Laboratory. For this, a so-called structural qualification unit is used – a full-scale engineering model that faithfully mimics future flight hardware in terms of mass, stiffness, and payload distribution. Although this model will never leave Earth, it must withstand, and often exceed, the loads expected during actual launch, to leave a safety margin for the flight system.

In the first phase, vibration tests are conducted. The entire two-stage assembly is secured to a massive "shaker" table in a clean room, where powerful electromechanical actuators shake it in three axes – forward-backward, left-right, and up-down. The vibration profile is designed to reproduce in a short time the powerful shocks and tremors the structure will experience while the rocket passes through the densest layers of the atmosphere and expends its stages. Hundreds of accelerometers and strain gauges distributed across the structure monitor how individual parts bend, where resonances occur, and at which points they approach allowable stress limits. If unexpected response amplifications are observed during tests, engineers can refine numerical models or reinforce critical parts of the structure.

Acoustic tests follow in a special chamber with concrete walls more than 40 centimeters thick. Built into the walls are huge acoustic "horns" which, powered by compressed nitrogen, increase sound pressure to levels above 150 decibels in a second. This comprehensive sonic impact simulates the simultaneous effect of engine noise, aerodynamic flow, and reflection from the launch pad on the entire structure of the lander and orbital vehicle. Under such conditions, the behavior of solar panels, antennas, fuel tanks, mechanical connections, and sensitive electronics is carefully observed – everything that could be exposed to unexpected vibrations or acoustic resonances in a real launch.

Parallel to dynamic tests, thermal-vacuum tests are conducted in chambers that can mimic conditions ranging from almost complete vacuum to rarefied atmospheres, with a wide range of temperatures. Although Blue Ghost Mission 2 will operate in a lunar environment without a significant atmosphere, the spacecraft enters and exits Earth's shadow during travel, passes through different geometries of illumination by Solar radiation, and experiences strong thermal gradients between illuminated and shadowed parts. Heating and cooling cycles, during which the behavior of the structure, electronics, and propulsion systems is measured, are designed to simulate the most critical combinations of flight conditions.

Knowledge Passed Down Through Generations of Engineers

Behind the seemingly simple idea of "shake the spacecraft and see if it holds" lies a sophisticated engineering discipline. The way the test profile is defined, where reference sensors are placed, how far the safety margin goes – all of this has been learned at JPL for decades on examples of real missions. Reports on programs like the Mars Exploration Rovers document in detail the correlations between laboratory tests and the behavior of spacecraft in flight, as well as situations where test protocols had to be revised following unexpected occurrences in space.

Teams at the Environmental Test Laboratory apply this body of knowledge today to commercial missions like Blue Ghost. Their task is to combine Firefly's numerical structure models, NASA's standards for environmental testing, and the actual limitations of equipment in the laboratory. If the test is done too gently, there is a risk that problems not "caught" by the laboratory will appear in actual flight. If the test is too aggressive, expensive hardware can be unnecessarily damaged and delays caused. Finding the balance between these two extremes is a key part of the job – and something that is not learned from textbooks, but from working on missions that are remembered for decades.

For Firefly, working with the JPL team means that the same people and procedures that prepared government missions are now helping to qualify a commercial system. Experiences gathered on Blue Ghost Mission 1, where tests showed that the spacecraft would behave within expected limits in actual flight, are now compared with results for the taller and more complex two-stage assembly of Blue Ghost Mission 2. If response patterns are similar, this further confirms the robustness of the basic architecture; if differences are observed, engineers get the opportunity to reinforce critical parts or adjust test conditions in time.

Private Lunar Missions and Blue Ghost's Place in the New Race to the Moon

Blue Ghost Mission 1 and 2 are part of a wider wave of private attempts to land on the Moon. Japan's ispace lost the Hakuto-R spacecraft during the final braking phase in 2023, while American Intuitive Machines achieved a soft landing with the Odysseus lander in 2024, but not completely nominal operations due to orientation problems upon touching the ground. Firefly's Blue Ghost, which landed precisely and stably in Mare Crisium on March 2, 2025, thus established itself as the first commercial lander to fully achieve the goal – from landing to a complete scientific program – as part of NASA's CLPS contract.

The success of the first mission does not automatically guarantee the success of the second, but it provides a solid statistical and technical foundation. Blue Ghost Mission 2 will be operationally more complex: it will have to coordinate the operation of two spacecraft, maintain a reliable radio link with the far side of the Moon via an orbital relay, support demanding scientific experiments like LuSEE-Night, and simultaneously integrate the needs of multiple space agencies and commercial partners. Every piece of data collected during current tests – from tiny shifts in the frequency response of the structure to the behavior of sensitive electronics in extreme conditions – enters a common pool of knowledge that will also benefit Blue Ghost Mission 3 and later missions to the Moon's South Pole.

For NASA's Artemis program, which plans longer and more regular human missions in the vicinity and on the surface of the Moon in the second half of the decade, reliable commercial "delivery services" play a dual role. On one hand, CLPS missions like Blue Ghost ensure a constant flow of scientific data and demonstrations of new technologies at a significantly lower cost than classic, large government missions. On the other hand, every new orbiter, lander, rover, or communication satellite becomes part of the growing lunar infrastructure – a network of spacecraft and systems that will enable future astronauts more reliable communication, more precise navigation, and a better understanding of resources on the Moon.

What Follows for Blue Ghost and JPL's Test Halls

As 2025 draws to a close, Firefly is completing the qualification of key subsystems for Blue Ghost Mission 2 and preparing the transition from the engineering model to flight hardware. In parallel, subsequent missions are being developed, including Blue Ghost Mission 3, which is scheduled to land in the Gruithuisen Domes area near the Lunar South Pole at the end of the decade as part of a new NASA CLPS task worth about 179 million dollars. While new structures are being assembled and instruments from partners from the USA, Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United Arab Emirates are being integrated at Firefly's facilities, new test configurations are being planned at JPL in Pasadena that will have to verify every new combination of payloads and trajectories.

For JPL's Environmental Test Laboratory, this means that the historic infrastructure from the 1960s, with constant modernizations, is increasingly involved in the commercial space economy. Instead of exclusively government probes, today private landers, orbiters, and entire assemblies like Blue Ghost–Elytra Dark pass through its chambers. In this blend of the old and new space era lies the core of the Blue Ghost Mission 2 story: on one side is an agile private company wanting to regularly fly to the Moon and offer delivery, communication, and imaging services, and on the other is a NASA laboratory with seven decades of experience in testing hardware for the most demanding missions. If tests in the Environmental Test Laboratory confirm that the two-stage Blue Ghost–Elytra Dark system can withstand all the shocks of launch, vacuum, and extreme temperatures, Blue Ghost Mission 2 will get the chance to continue where the first mission left off – but this time on the far, radio-quiet side of the Moon.