US space startup aces Moon landing as private lunar exploration surges

American space startup Firefly became the second ever private firm to soft-land on the Moon Sunday after its Blue Ghost lander touched down on the lunar surface.

The NASA-funded spacecraft holds ten experiments: The space agency hopes Blue Ghost and other commercial probes will help it answer questions about the lunar environment in preparation for its planned astronaut missions later this decade.

The feat comes a year after another startup, Intuitive Machines, became the first company to land on the Moon; the company’s second lander due to arrive there in the coming week.

The back-to-back landings are part of a broad surge in private space exploration that analysts have said represents the foundations of a lunar economy: The Moon has the natural resources to make rocket propellant, for example, and could act as a launchpad for future missions further into space — including to potentially mine metal-rich asteroids.