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(Bloomberg) — Firefly Aerospace is poised to land a robotic spacecraft on the moon on Sunday in partnership with NASA, part of the agency’s ongoing efforts to study the lunar surface ahead of planned human landings.

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After journeying to the moon since its launch on January 15, Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander is slated for touchdown at 3:45 a.m. New York time. The spacecraft, currently in orbit around the moon, is carrying 10 tools and experiments built by NASA, including a drill that will bury itself into the lunar soil to test the moon’s temperature.

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A landing would be the first for Firefly, a Texas-based rocket and spacecraft maker, and the second by a commercial company after Houston-based Intuitive Machines Inc. landed a robotic spacecraft intact on the lunar surface in 2024.   

“The energy and the excitement level is kind of ramping right now,” said Ray Allensworth, Firefly’s spacecraft program director, adding that she and her team are “very confident” after having done numerous simulations of the descent.

Firefly has the opportunity to improve upon that history-making moment, since the Intuitive Machines lander tipped over during its touchdown, forcing an early end to the mission. 

Firefly’s mission is partially funded by NASA as part of the agency’s renewed efforts to put humans on the moon for the first time since 1972. NASA has funded the private development of robotic landers by several companies, including Firefly, to transport experiments and learn more about the moon’s south pole before future astronauts attempt to land there.

“I could see us launching and landing on the moon every year and starting to look into creating an ecosystem on the moon,” Firefly Chief Executive Officer Jason Kim said in an interview with Bloomberg.

Blue Ghost is one of three lunar landers currently bound for the moon, a first in spaceflight history. 

So far, NASA’s effort to fund commercial moon landers has had mixed results.

An agency-funded lander built by Astrobotic Technology Inc., a Pittsburgh-based startup, suffered a tank leak after launch that prevented it from landing on the moon. Other companies have gone bankrupt or pulled out of their partnerships with NASA, citing costs and technical difficulties.

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