Continuing the trend of recent years, the 2025 Robert J. Collier Trophy went to a recipient conducting activities far beyond Earth’s atmosphere.
The National Aeronautic Association (NAA) on Wednesday announced that the team behind Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1—the first successful commercial lunar landing—took home the prestigious trophy, awarded annually since 1911 for the “greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics in America.”
Firefly’s Blue Ghost beat out the teams behind Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 demonstrator, Venus Aerospace’s rotating detonation rocket engine, Wing’s drone delivery service, Anduril’s experimental YFQ-44A, and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Surface Water and Ocean Topography project.
The previous three winners are the architects of the Parker Solar Probe, NASA and Lockheed Martin’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample mission, and James Webb Space Telescope. The Apollo 11 crew won in 1969.
The Blue Ghost Mission 1 team will be formally presented with the award in Washington, D.C., in June.
“By successfully delivering and operating critical science on the lunar surface, they have proven that the commercial sector is ready to lead the way in our return to the moon,” said Jim Albaugh, NAA board chair, in a statement. “This achievement is a bedrock for the future of human and robotic presence in deep space.”
Blue Ghost earned the NAA’s recognition over several other transformative technologies.
Boom’s XB-1 completed five supersonic test flights without generating an audible sonic boom on the ground. Wing and Walmart are expanding their drone delivery service to 270 stores by 2027. Anduril’s YFQ-44A is among the most advanced collaborative combat aircraft (CCA)—uncrewed aircraft designed to serve as “loyal wingmen” for crewed fighters—being studied by the U.S. Air Force.
One Small Step for the Private Sector
In landing on the moon last March, Firefly achieved something that has only been accomplished by the governments of a handful of nations.
For the 37 years between the former Soviet Union’s Luna 24 mission and China’s Chang’e 3 mission in 2013, no spacecraft achieved a soft lunar landing. Landers from the U.S., Russia, India, Israel, and Japan have crashed or otherwise been unable to reach the surface.
Given the complexity of lunar landings, NASA launched the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program to procure lower cost lunar transport solutions from private companies.
So far, they’ve been a mixed bag. Astrobotic’s Peregrine Mission 1, the first under CLPS, fell short of a moonfall in 2024. A few months later, Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus tipped over after landing. The company in 2025 launched another vehicle, Athena, that landed on its side.
Not only did Blue Ghost successfully land on the moon, it operated on the surface for about two weeks, longer than any commercial mission. And it did it for cheap. According to Firefly, NASA funded the mission with about $100 million over four years. The space agency spent an estimated $23 billion (in 2020 dollars) on the Apollo lander.
“Standing on the shoulders of giants, the Firefly team further proved that commercial space can achieve what was once only accomplished by nation-states,” Firefly CEO Jason Kim said Wednesday.
The car-sized Blue Ghost launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and spent about six weeks traveling to the moon, touching down at the Mare Crisium basin.
It collected and returned nearly 120 gigabytes of data, far more than was expected. That includes the first high-resolution images of a total solar eclipse captured from the moon, video of a lunar sunset, and imagery of lunar dust—which was observed to damage equipment during the Apollo missions—captured during landing.
“This extra data allows scientists to increase our nation’s understanding of the moon for critical programs like Artemis, while supporting the growing lunar infrastructure,” Kim wrote in a blog post on Monday. “The data can also provide valuable intelligence to other commercial lunar service providers and enhance future landing capabilities.”
Blue Ghost also deployed 10 NASA payloads to study the moon’s surface materials, heat flow, and magnetic field. Instruments drilled into the lunar surface to study heat flow, analyzed the moon’s exosphere, and tested technologies for future human missions. The Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE), for example, tracked GPS signals on the moon’s surface for the first time.
The lander beamed one final transmission before powering down for good: “Per aspera ad astra! Love, Blue Ghost.”
What’s Next for Blue Ghost?
Firefly has been contracted for three further CLPS missions, and it aims to push the envelope further each time.
On Blue Ghost Mission 2, scheduled for later this year, Kim said Firefly “plans to unlock even more lunar data.” It will stack Blue Ghost atop its Elytra Dark orbital vehicle for the first time, deploying the European Space Agency’s Lunar Pathfinder satellite to lunar orbit. Elytra will deploy Blue Ghost to the far side of the moon for a 10-day mission, which includes two CLPS task orders.
The third mission, scheduled for 2028, will include a lunar rover designed to explore the moon’s Gruithuisen Domes—an area untouched by humanity. A fourth mission in 2029 will deploy two more rovers and three scientific instruments at the lunar south pole.
Missions 3 and 4 will also fly with Elytra vehicles, which will continue circling the moon for five years. The orbiters will capture continuous lunar imagery and beam it back to Earth in support of Ocula, which Firefly bills as the “first commercial lunar imaging and mapping service.”
The company believes Ocula could replace more costly, government-led projects such as NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Using a constellation of Elytra vehicles, it is designed to map landing sites for future human missions, illuminate hard-to-detect lunar mineral compositions, and track vehicles and objects on the lunar surface and in orbit.
Ocula could help NASA gather more accurate observations of asteroid 2024 YR4, which the space agency estimates has a very small chance of hitting Earth when it enters our neighborhood in 2032. Per Firefly, it could one day extend to Mars and other planets.
