Closing Bell - Manifest Space: Blue Ghost’s Moon Mission with Firefly Aerospace CEO Jason Kim 3/7/25

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

Firefly Aerospace has made history with its commercial lunar lander Blue Ghost making a soft landing over the weekend—the second private operation to ever do so, and the first to do it without complications. The mission involved five payloads collected valuable data. CEO Jason Kim joins Morgan Brennan to discuss Blue Ghost’s successful soft landing, the company’s upcoming plans to launch its Alpha rocket and potentially launching lunar missions to Mars.

At 3 34 Eastern on Sunday morning, a squat six and a half foot tall lander plunked its four legs down on the surface of the moon. A technological feat only a few have ever achieved. Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost became the second privately operated robotic spacecraft to land softly on the lunar surface and the first to do it without complications. Firefly CEO Jason Kim says not only did the landing go as planned but so far all of the experiments and payloads involved in the 14-day mission are proceeding as anticipated as well. What we did was we opened up the total available market for every orbit, the low Earth orbit, medium Earth orbit, geosynchronous orbit, cislunar because our lunar lander is basically a satellite with legs.

So we're able to open up all those opportunities. And then sticking the landing, there's five countries that have done that successfully. We're the sixth entity and we're a private company, a commercial company. So it really shows the rest of the world that we're in a near era now. Commercial companies can do these kind of game-changing missions

and we could pass the cost and schedule savings on to the customers. Firefly isn't the only lander on the moon either. It was joined today by another private spacecraft, Intuitive Machines Athena Vehicle. As of Thursday afternoon, publicly traded Intuitive Machines was confirming its spacecraft had landed, but the state and condition of it was still being determined after the landing process took some unexpected turns. I am wishing them godspeed and everything they're doing is what we're about as well, is just grow the lunar economy, grow commercial space.

You know, they're just across the street from us. They're great people, just like Firefly has great people. And they're fellow Texans. I'm wishing them that they score this touchdown. On this episode, Firefly's Jason Kim discusses the company's moon mission, what's next for Firefly Aerospace, and how he expects deep space exploration to evolve. I'm Morgan Brennan and this is Manifest Space.

Joining me now Jason Kim, the CEO of Firefly Aerospace, and just a few days off of making history. Your commercial lunar lander touched down softly on the moon in the early morning hours on Sunday and Blue Ghost is now carrying out its mission. Let's talk about it. That's right we got moon dust on our boots. We got to dust it off. How many people get to say that? It's pretty fascinating. Our team is just amazing what they've been able to accomplish. Private industry, commercial industry was pushed forward because of firefly landing on the moon softly and upright. We've already commenced the payload operations and so there's five payloads that are getting

data. You know the planet vac, the lunar planet vac has sucked up the dust already. We've got the electrodynamic Dust Shield has already mitigated dust and so that's going to make you know Kennedy Space Center very happy and Jena Petro very happy as well. And then you know we were able to sense GPS and Galileo from you know from the moon surface so that's going to make the Italian space agency, Carlos in particular, very happy. And then the list goes on. There's the regolith adherence characterization

that we got data for. Lister is starting to do subsurface drilling. And we talked about that last time. So we're just very happy that we're delivering for our payloads. So really everything you're kind of laying out right now or many of the things you're laying out right now, aspects of this, are really about testing the surface of the moon and what that's going to look like to continue to build out there. Yeah

it's a great location, Markrissium, it's a basin. There used to be an asteroid that basically created this volcanic crater and so it's a great location, Markrissium, it's a basin. There used to be an asteroid that basically created this volcanic crater. And so it's a really good spot to do things like heliophysics. So we're sensing the Earth-Sun interactions of ions. We're taking a lot of the regolith information that we need for future missions. That electrodynamic dust shield is incredibly important because for future exploration, if we have humans on the moon, that dust is very harsh and we want to be able to characterize it so we can prevent any problems with future astronauts and robotic missions in the future. And then my

favorite, as I've mentioned before, is capturing the lunar sunset at the end of the 14-day mission, capturing the lunar glow phenomenology, which I think I told you before it's going to look like a bunch of fireflies on the moon. Yeah, I know and you've already put out some pretty incredible images, I have to say. Yeah, 62 gigabytes of information already because we had this pragmatic approach of approaching the moon in 45 days. It allowed us to have flexibility to land and stick that landing on the day that we needed to ensure we got 14 Earth days, one lunar day of sun, solar lit up so we could do these missions. And it paid off. We never had to do a makeup burn or anything. All seven burns were spot on.

The team was really clockwork, including when we touched down was perfectly the time that we said we were going to do it. So the soft landing was smooth and sort of went as expected. There wasn't a lot of nail biting? You know, I can't say that there wasn't a lot of pent up, you know, anxiety, but you know, the day of when I woke up, I was just so confident in this team. They've done their design work, all the testing and the rehearsals and simulations. I couldn't contain myself. I knew we were gonna stick this landing on the day of. So what have the lessons learned been so far?

And I guess how does this position you for future landers then? Well, you know what we did was we opened up the total available market for every orbit, the low Earth orbit, medium Earth orbit, geosynchronous orbit, cislunar, because our lunar lander is basically a satellite with legs. So we're able to open up all those opportunities and then sticking the landing. There's five countries that have done that successfully.

We're the sixth entity and we're a private company, a commercial company. So it really shows the rest of the world that we're in a near era now. Commercial companies can do these kind of game changing missions and we could pass the cost and schedule savings on to the customers. So you get through this mission, what's next for Firefly? Well, we're about to launch our Alpha rocket.

We're going to launch many times this year, more than once a quarter. And that's going to launch many times this year, more than once a quarter. And that's going to launch the Lockheed Martin LM-400, which is a 500 kilogram satellite plus. And, you know, we're going to do more responsive launches. We just won a responsive launch contract called Victus Sol for the Space Force in January. We just also won a NASA climate mission just the other day. And so we're going to launch a couple of NASA missions and more and more responsive launch missions going forward. In addition to that, we're building a medium launch vehicle.

So we've already delivered the first stage LOX tanks this year. We've done over 50 of the Miranda hot fire tests. We took it to 100% thrust last October. So really on the path to delivering that medium launch vehicle so we could service the National Security Space Launch Program and plenty of customers that have proliferated, constellations that need to get their business models up and running. In addition to that, we can launch lunar lander missions in the future. So anything's possible there. And then you see annual launches of our landers. to that we can launch lunar lander missions in the future. So anything's possible there. And then you see annual launches of our landers. You know our lander can you know land on the

moon. We just proved that. But it's scalable to Mars missions as well. So we see a bright future for our lander business. And finally ELECTRA. It's our space maneuver vehicle. There's so many game changing new categories that we're going to create with the ELECTRA constellation. Do you think we get to we get humans to the moon here in the next couple of years? Do you think we actually see those first missions to Mars launched? It does seem like you have an administration that really wants to move quickly with this. You know, I think anything's possible. We just proved that with a commercial company landing on the moon. So I'm pretty sure that this new era, this golden era,

it's going to propel us to land on the moon and Mars and other places. We have another lander that is poised to attempt a soft landing today as well. That's Intuitive Machines, another Texas company. How are you assessing or watching that? I am wishing them godspeed and you know, everything they're doing is, you know, what we're about as well is just grow the lunar economy, grow commercial space.

You know, they're just across the street from us. They're great people, just like Firefly has great people and they're fellow Texans. I'm wishing them that they score this touchdown. How does it speak to this emerging, or I guess this growing space economy that we're in the midst of? I'm very bullish on it.

I've seen the technology, I've run other companies. Firefly is just the perfect example of what commercial industry can do. There's really no stopping this team at Firefly, and there's other companies like us. Sounds like 2025 is a very pivotal year for Firefly. We're built for this. 2025 is cadence for Alpha. We're going to deliver the first stage of the medium launch vehicle. We're going to do more and more lunar missions like, you know, the Blue Ghost

2 and the Blue Ghost 3, perhaps some commercial landers as well. And then Elytra is gonna get its Nargol launch and we're gonna do a production line of our space maneuver vehicles as well. I've asked you this before, but I'm gonna ask you again, now that you've just made history, an IPO on the cards? You know, it's too early to make those kind of decisions. Anything is possible.

We have great decision makers. you know, we're looking at the markets. I really believe in Firefly, our people, our 750 people. I can't brag about them enough. They just did something that is historic and the videos that you see online of the lunar lander landing softly and upright with the shadow behind us waving at Earth is just monumental. Jason, it's great to speak with you. Congratulations on all of the success. Jason Kim of Firefly Aerospace. That does it for this episode of Manifest Space. Make sure you never miss a launch by following us wherever you get your podcasts

and by watching our coverage on Closing Bell Overtime. I'm Morgan Brennan.