**Korean-American CEO of Firefly Space Company: “Every step was precise”**
**NASA-private collaboration accelerates lunar exploration… Major countries rush for moon landing attempts**
(Los Angeles = Yonhap News) Correspondent Im Mi-na = “Everything was precise like clockwork, including the landing on the moon. We got some moon dust on our boots.”
Jason Kim, the Korean-American CEO of the American space company Firefly Aerospace (hereafter referred to as Firefly), stated this after the company’s unmanned lunar lander, “Blue Ghost,” successfully landed on the moon on the 2nd (local time).
CEO Kim reported that Blue Ghost is “standing stably and upright.”
The lunar landing process of Blue Ghost was broadcast live via the control center near Austin, Texas, and NASA’s streaming channel.
Blue Ghost successfully landed on the lunar surface as scheduled at 2:34 AM Central Time, and within about 30 minutes, it began sending various observational data and photos of the lunar surface taken by the spacecraft back to Earth.
This marks the second time in history that a private company has sent a spacecraft to the moon and successfully landed on its surface.
Previously, another American space company, Intuitive Machines, landed the “Nova-C” model “Odyssey” near the lunar south pole in February of last year.
However, at that time, one leg of Odyssey broke during the landing process, causing it to fall over and shorten its operational life, resulting in a “partial success.”
In contrast, this time, Blue Ghost almost perfectly succeeded in landing on the moon, as the company revealed, marking another milestone in the history of private lunar exploration.
Joel Kerns, deputy director of NASA’s science mission exploration division, explained at a press conference after Blue Ghost’s lunar landing, “What Firefly demonstrated today looked easy, but in fact, it’s an incredibly challenging task.”
Kerns further emphasized, “Landing something on the lunar surface is an enormously difficult technical feat,” and that what was seen today is “evidence that NASA’s CLPS model, pursued since 2018, can be successful.”
Instead of directly developing lunar exploration vehicles, NASA started the “Commercial Lunar Payload Services” (CLPS) program in 2018, which involves contracts with various companies, as it believed that having private companies compete with each other would be more cost-effective and yield results more quickly.
Through this program, three companies, including Firefly, have launched lunar landers.
Firefly will attempt a mission to land a probe on the far side of the moon next year, under an additional contract with NASA. So far, China is the only country that has successfully landed on the moon’s far side.
Firefly started as a startup named “Firefly Space Systems” in 2014, founded by aerospace engineer Tom Markusic, who had experience at space companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic. However, a lawsuit alleging that Markusic had stolen trade secrets from Virgin Galactic led to investor withdrawal, causing a management crisis.
The company changed its name to Firefly Aerospace in 2017, and its largest shareholder, private equity firm AE Industrial Partners, recruited Jason Kim as CEO last October to reorganize company management and technology development.
CEO Kim is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and worked at aerospace and defense companies such as Northrop Grumman and Raytheon before moving to Firefly after serving as CEO of Millennium Space Systems, a Boeing subsidiary.
Meanwhile, in recent years, as governments and private companies from major countries, including the United States, have actively entered lunar exploration, the lunar orbit is becoming increasingly crowded.
Japan’s iSpace, which launched with Blue Ghost on the same rocket on January 15th, is continuing its flight through a different route and plans to attempt a lunar landing around May or June.
iSpace attempted a lunar landing in April 2023, but it failed.
Additionally, American company Intuitive Machines, which succeeded in a lunar landing for the first time last year, launched its second lunar probe, “Athena,” on the 26th of last month, and this spacecraft will attempt to land near a highland area adjacent to a crater near the lunar south pole on the 6th.
The landing target of Athena is the closest to the south pole among all lunar exploration missions to date, with the aim of identifying the potential presence of resources such as water (ice), gas, and other minerals at the lunar south pole.
So far, five countries, including the United States, Russia (former Soviet Union), China, India, and Japan, have successfully landed spacecraft on the lunar surface.