Excitement for Canadian company as Firefly’s Blue Ghost lands on moon [Video]

The head of a Quebec aerospace company says he’s thrilled by the confirmation that a private lunar lander has touched down on the moon with his company’s technology aboard.

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost successfully descended from lunar orbit on autopilot early Sunday morning, carrying experiments for NASA and several Canadian-based technologies.

Jean de Lafontaine says the moment has been a decade in the making for Sherbrooke, Que.-based NGC Aerospace, which produces a GPS-like lunar navigation system that uses the moon’s craters as references.

He said the company has experience deploying its technology on satellites orbiting, and has tested the lunar system repeatedly on simulators. “But there’s nothing like making it happen in the real environment of the moon,” he said Sunday in a phone interview.

He says the technology should allow scientists to calculate lunar landings far more accurately than previously — to within as little as 100 metres — …