Firefly Aerospaces first attempt at landing on the moon was a success. The company, which is working with NASA under the agencys Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, announced early Sunday morning that its Blue Ghost lander softly touched down on the moon, and its upright and communicating with the team back home. Blue Ghost landed at 3:34AM ET in a region known as Mare Crisium. While Fireflys lander isnt the first commercial spacecraft to land on the moon, it is the first to land properly Intuitive Machines Odysseus ended up on its side last year after a faster-than-planned descent.Blue Ghost and the NASA instruments its carrying are expected to remain in operation for about 14 Earth days. After that, lunar night will begin. If all goes as planned, the lander will capture images in the leadup to lunar night and a few hours after darkness falls, getting high-definition imagery of a total eclipse, the lunar sunset and other moments to document the behaviour of levitating lunar dust. NASA is also testing instruments that can drill and collect samples from the surface.Fireflys Blue Ghost Mission 1 launched on January 15 and reached lunar orbit about a month later. The team says its already sent over 27 GB of data back to Earth from its journey. Just through transit to the Moon, Fireflys mission has already delivered the most science data to date for the NASA CLPS initiative, Shea Ferring, Fireflys Chief Technology Officer, said in a statement, noting that the hardest part of the mission is over. On X, the company shared a photo showing the lander's shadow on the surface of the moon following its successful touchdown, and joked, The lander saw her shadow, 2 more weeks of ops!This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/science/space/fireflys-blue-ghost-lander-successfully-touched-down-on-the-moon-155728834.html?src=rss