Texas A&M Student’s Work Lands On The Moon With Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission

In the summer of 2024, senior aerospace engineering student Garrett Stevenson landed an internship with Firefly Aerospace. But that wasn’t the only thing he landed — Stevenson’s name is now on the moon.

In the early hours of March 2, 2025, Firefly’s lunar lander Blue Ghost successfully landed on the moon, carrying a plaque with the names of those who worked on the project, including Stevenson. Blue Ghost is a robotic lunar lander, carrying out Blue Ghost Mission 1 as a contractor under NASA’s Artemis program and Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. The aim is to use robotic lunar landers to scout the moon before humans return to the moon later this decade.

During his summer at Firefly, Stevenson worked as an assembly, integration and testing intern. His primary responsibility was to develop testing procedures and scripts for environmental testing. He also had the opportunity to work on several other aspects of Blue Ghost, such as installation of multilayer insulation, measurement of orientation and relative position of the lander’s sensors and thrusters, and assembly of landing leg crush cans.

“Landing leg crush cans are used to help reduce the impact on the rest of the lander. By having a little aluminum honeycomb around the size of a can get compressed by the force of the landing the impact force on the rest of the lander is reduced,” Stevenson said.

Stevenson notes that being able to work on multiple parts of the project was a highlight of the internship. This allowed him to adapt what he was working on and try his hand at a variety of different things, including working on testing infrastructure for Blue Ghost Mission 2, scheduled for launch in 2026. Stevenson worked on the assembly of testing infrastructure for Blue Ghost Mission 2 which included the structure, thermal control, and electrical controls.

Blue Ghost Mission 2 will use a new lander since the Blue Ghost Mission 1 lander will remain on the moon following the completion of its mission. Blue Ghost Mission 2 will also include a transfer vehicle called Elytra, which was built by Firefly.

Stevenson encourages students and future interns to find projects they are interested in and start working on them now.

“I am a big supporter of doing what you want to do in the future now. Even if it does not turn out how you planned, at least you have the experience,” Stevenson said. “Understanding what went wrong and learning how to improve it are important skills.”

Following his graduation, Stevenson will be staying in College Station to pursue a master’s degree in aerospace engineering at Texas A&M.