Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander captured a sunrise on the moon. (Photo credit: Firefly Aerospace)
The Blue Ghost lunar lander captured images of the moon's sunrise and other spectacular pictures after successfully landing on the lunar surface early Sunday morning (March 2).
Blue Ghost touched down in a massive crater on the northeastern side of the moon's near side at 3:34 a.m. ET, NASA said in a statement. The space agency is partnering with commercial space exploration company Firefly Aerospace, which is leading the mission, to advance our knowledge of the moon and test new technologies on its surface for future space exploration. Blue Ghost is only the second privately funded lunar lander to ever touch down on the moon, following Intuitive Machines' Odysseus, which touched down in February 2024.
Following Blue Ghost's successful landing, Firefly Aerospace CEO Jason Kim noted in a statement that Firefly “literally and figuratively went over the moon.” Blue Ghost 1's lunar mission, or “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” is the first of three planned Firefly missions to our nearest celestial neighbor that will run through 2028.
“Firefly’s annual lunar missions pave the way for a long-term presence on the Moon that will help open up access to the rest of the solar system for our country, our partners, and the world,” Kim said.
Blue Ghost launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Jan. 15. The mission previously took numerous photographs en route to the moon. The latest images were taken after Blue Ghost landed in Mare Crisium, a lunar basin more than 480 kilometers (300 miles) wide, according to a NASA statement.
Even though Firefly Aerospace reached the moon a year after Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander, the company said it was the first commercial entity to “successfully land on the moon” because Blue Ghost landed softly and remains upright and stable. Last year, Odysseus ultimately crashed to the moon’s surface, breaking one of its legs in the process. (That failed landing only partially contributed to the mission’s success, as Live Science previously reported.) Intuitive Machines plans to return to the moon with its Athena lander on Thursday (March 6), as Live Science partner site Space.com reported.
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Blue Ghost's first image of the moon's surface. (Photo credit: Firefly Aerospace)
The upper deck of the Blue Ghost lunar module with Earth in the background. (Photo credit:
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