Firefly Aerospace’s “Blue Ghost” lander dropped out of lunar orbit and swooped to a rocket-powered touchdown early Sunday, pulling off the first fully successful moon landing by a commercially-built and operated robotic spacecraft.
Flying above the far side of the moon in a circular 62-mile-high orbit, the squat lander fired its main engine at 2:31 a.m. EST, kicking off a white-knuckle 63-minute descent to the landing site in Mare Crisium — the Sea of Crises — in the northeast quadrant of the moon as viewed from Earth.
