Ghost Riders in the SkyFirefly Aerospace teams with TACC to chart bold path for commercial lunar explorationbyJorge Salazar Sept. 11, 2025 Feature Storyshare this: Firefly Aerospace's first Blue Ghost mission, dubbed “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” successfully landed on the moon on March 2, 2025, with support from simulations on TACC supercomputers. The Blue Ghost Mission 1 lunar lander delivered 10 NASA CLPS science and technology payloads to the Mare Crisium lunar impact basin. Credit: Firefly Aerospace The gray, pockmarked landscape of Mare Crisium slowly moved into view of the cameras aboard Blue Ghost, an unpiloted spacecraft that traveled for 45 days from Earth to the moon before its ultimate adventure on March 2, 2025 — the perilous descent to the dusty surface.Floating like an apparition enveloped in lunar regolith and bathed in light from the rising sun, Texas-based Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost touched down, a historic feat that culminated in the first successful commercial moon landing. Mission patch for Blue Ghost Mission 1. Credit: Firefly Aerospace Over the course of one lunar day (14 Earth days), Blue Ghost faithfully conducted a mission of delivering 10 science and technology instruments to study lunar regolith, demonstrate drilling technologies, and perform other experiments that help prepare for future human missions to the moon.As part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, Firefly’s first Blue Ghost mission, dubbed “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” set the tone for the future of commercial space exploration.How TACC Helped Chart the CourseDriven to keep costs down without compromising safety and mission integrity, Firefly teamed up with the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) through its industry program in 2014 to conduct rocket simulations on the Stampede1 supercomputer. The computer simulations reduce the time and cost needed for Firefly to determine promising designs that can then be built, tested, and refined.The industry partnership continued with simulations on Lonestar5 and more recently with work on Frontera and Lonestar6. Firefly leverages TACC’s computational resources to perform complex computational fluid dynamics simulations for the design of its launch vehicles and the Spectre propulsion system on its lunar lander, Blue Ghost. Lunar horizon glow as captured by Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander. Credit: Firefly Aerospace “Simulation-driven designs are validated using test data, which in turn inform the creation of digital twins,” said Bryce McEwen of Firefly Aerospace. “Computational models provide value by enabling engineers to rapidly predict and optimize system/component performance, determine root causes of unexpected system behaviors, and guide instrumentation decisions.” “TACC supercomputers help accelerate innovation. Computational modeling reduces risk, saves time and cost, and enables rapid iteration toward safer, more efficient space missions. Supercomputing is a critical technology driving the future of space exploration.” Examples include simulations of airframe aerodynamics, propellant tank sloshing, thruster injectors, rocket engine regenerative cooling channels, propellant inlet manifolds, tank ullage diffusers, tank outlets and anti-vortex devices, and rocket engine combustion.Firefly’s historic Blue Ghost Mission 1 landed on the near side of the moon, and future Blue Ghost missions in 2026 and 2028 will target the far side and the Gruithuisen Domes with rovers to explore the moon’s unique composition and identify its resources.
