WASHINGTON — A commercial lunar lander has successfully entered orbit around the moon, while another lander launched simultaneously has conducted a lunar flyby in preparation for its return.

On February 13, Firefly Aerospace announced that its Blue Ghost 1 lander officially entered lunar orbit after executing a burn of its reaction control system thrusters that lasted 4 minutes and 15 seconds, starting at 8:51 p.m. Eastern Time.

While the company hasn’t shared detailed information about the specifics of the orbit, amateur radio monitors have estimated it to be between 150 and 5,673 kilometers above the moon’s surface. Firefly indicated that further maneuvers are planned to achieve a circular orbit in advance of the landing attempt.

The landing is slated for March 2 at 3:45 a.m. Eastern Time, as confirmed by Firefly and NASA on February 14. Blue Ghost 1 is carrying 10 payloads from NASA under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which are intended to function at the landing site near Mare Crisium throughout the lunar day and several hours after sunset.

Launched on January 15 atop a Falcon 9 rocket, Blue Ghost 1 shared the launch with Resilience, a lunar lander from the Japanese company ispace. On February 14, Resilience completed its own lunar flyby, coming as close as 8,400 kilometers from the moon at 5:43 p.m. Eastern Time.

Resilience is following a low-energy trajectory that will take it up to 1.1 million kilometers from Earth before returning in early May for a lunar orbit insertion burn, with plans for a landing in the Mare Frigoris region, although ispace has not yet confirmed a specific landing date.

“I have great confidence in the Resilience lander, which has consistently reached its milestones and is on track for success, thanks to our team’s meticulous preparations for this notable flyby of the moon,” said Takeshi Hakamada, founder and CEO of ispace, in a statement.

Both Firefly Aerospace and ispace have clearly defined milestones and success criteria for their respective missions. For Firefly, achieving lunar orbit entry was the 10th milestone out of a total of 17 leading up to operations after sunset on the lunar surface. Meanwhile, Resilience’s lunar flyby marked the fifth milestone of 10 for ispace, starting from pre-launch preparations to achieving a “steady system state” post-landing.

Interestingly, Blue Ghost 1 may operate on the lunar surface concurrently with another commercial lander. Intuitive Machines is gearing up for the launch of its IM-2 lunar lander mission on February 26, part of a four-day launch window. Similar to its IM-1 mission from last year, IM-2 will be taking a more direct route to the moon. Steve Altemus, CEO of Intuitive Machines, shared with CNBC on February 7 that a launch within this window could lead to a landing in the Mons Mouton region near the moon’s south pole on March 6.

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