Firefly’s Blue Ghost Lunar Lander Earns 2025 Collier Trophy

Spacecraft beats out Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 demonstrator, Wing’s drone delivery service, and other nominees.

Jack Daleo

Thursday, March 19, 2026 at 12:00 PM ET

Verified

Edited By:

Travis Tingle

Firefly’s Blue Ghost in 2025 became the first commercially built lunar lander to successfully touch down and operate on the moon. [Credit: Firefly Aerospace]

Key Takeaways:

Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Mission 1 was awarded the 2025 Robert J. Collier Trophy for achieving the first successful commercial lunar landing.
This accomplishment signifies the commercial sector's readiness to lead in deep space exploration, demonstrating a successful and significantly more cost-effective approach to lunar missions compared to historical government efforts.
The Blue Ghost lander operated on the moon for two weeks, collecting nearly 120 gigabytes of crucial data, including unique high-resolution images and video, and deploying 10 NASA payloads for scientific research and technology testing.
Firefly Aerospace has secured contracts for three more Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) missions, planning to deploy satellites, rovers to unexplored lunar regions, and establish a commercial lunar imaging and mapping service.

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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.”