In the summer of 2024, Garrett Stevenson, a senior in aerospace engineering, secured an internship with Firefly Aerospace. However, that wasn’t his only achievement — his name is now etched on the moon.

In the early morning of March 2, 2025, Firefly’s lunar lander, Blue Ghost, successfully executed a lunar landing, transporting a plaque bearing the names of contributors to the project, including Stevenson. Blue Ghost is an autonomous lunar lander, conducting Blue Ghost Mission 1 as a subcontractor under NASA’s Artemis program and the Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. The mission’s objective is to employ robotic lunar landers to survey the moon before human return missions later this decade.

During his internship at Firefly, Stevenson served as an intern for assembly, integration and testing. His main duty was to create testing procedures and scripts for environmental assessment. He also had the chance to engage in various other components of Blue Ghost, including the installation of multilayer insulation, orientation measurements, and the relative positioning of the lander’s sensors and thrusters, as well as the assembly of landing leg crush cans.

“Landing leg crush cans serve to minimize the impact on the rest of the lander. By compressing a small aluminum honeycomb the size of a can upon landing, the force of impact on the remainder of the lander is diminished,” Stevenson explained.

Stevenson emphasizes that working on diverse facets of the project was one of the highlights of his internship. This experience allowed him to adapt his focus and experiment with a variety of tasks, including contributing to the testing infrastructure for Blue Ghost Mission 2, planned for launch in 2026. Stevenson assisted in constructing the testing framework for Blue Ghost Mission 2, which encompassed structure, thermal management, and electrical controls.

Blue Ghost Mission 2 will introduce a new lander, as the Blue Ghost Mission 1 lander will remain on the lunar surface after fulfilling its mission. Additionally, Blue Ghost Mission 2 will feature a transfer vehicle named Elytra, developed by Firefly.

Stevenson encourages students and prospective interns to pursue projects they are passionate about and begin working on them now.

“I firmly believe in pursuing what you aspire to do in the future today. Even if it doesn’t unfold as planned, you at least gain the experience,” Stevenson stated. “Recognizing what went wrong and learning to enhance it are vital skills.”

After graduating, Stevenson plans to remain in College Station to pursue a master’s degree in aerospace engineering at Texas A&M.