Welcome to the moon! Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander reaches lunar orbit (video, photos)

[Pelican Press 0]

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Welcome to the moon! Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander reaches lunar orbit (video, photos)

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission.

Credit: Firefly Aerospace

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander has made it to the moon.

Blue Ghost fired its engines for four minutes and 15 seconds on Thursday (Feb. 13), injecting itself into an elliptical lunar orbit ahead of a planned touchdown try a little over two weeks from now.

The spacecraft commemorated the milestone by snapping some photos, a number of which Firefly stitched into a dramatic, 27-second-long time-lapse video.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png">

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander captured this photo of the moon shortly after arriving in lunar orbit on Feb. 13, 2025. | Credit: Firefly Aerospace

“I love you to

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

, but not back — I’m staying there,” the Texas-based company wrote (from Blue Ghost’s perspective) today (Feb. 14) in

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

that shared the video.

Related: Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander leaves Earth orbit to head for the moon

Blue Ghost launched Jan. 15 atop a

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

Falcon 9 rocket. The lander’s mission, called “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Blue Ghost is carrying 10 science and technology experiments for the agency, which wants to better understand the lunar environment before sending astronauts back to the moon via its

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

.

Blue Ghost will spend the next 16 days in lunar orbit, if all goes to plan. It will conduct additional engine burns to circularize its path around Earth’s nearest neighbor, then attempt a landing in the Mare Crisium (“Sea of Crises”) region of the moon’s near side on March 2.

Success would be historic. To date, just one private company, Houston-based Intuitive Machines, has soft-landed a spacecraft on the moon. That milestone came in February 2024, when a spacecraft called Odysseus touched down near the lunar south pole, also on a CLPS-backed mission.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png">

This Blue Ghost lunar-orbit selfie shows the lander’s solar panel and X-band antenna (left), as well as NASA’s LEXI payload (right). | Credit: Firefly Aerospace

RELATED STORIES:

— Blue Ghost moon lander sees Earth as a ‘blue marble’ from orbit (photo)

— Watch Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost moon lander witness an eclipse from space (video)

— Here’s what NASA is sending to the moon on Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander

Blue Ghost didn’t take flight alone last month; Resilience, a moon lander built by Tokyo-based company ispace, lifted off aboard the same Falcon 9. Resilience’s path to the moon is longer and more circuitous than Blue Ghost’s, however; the Japanese lander is expected to arrive in lunar orbit about 3.5 months from now.

Resilience, which isn’t carrying any NASA payloads, is ispace’s second moon lander. The first successfully reached lunar orbit in March 2023 but crashed during its touchdown attempt a month later after getting confused by the rim of a crater.

And there’s more moon-mission action coming soon. Intuitive Machines is scheduled to launch its second lunar lander, Athena, on Feb. 26, also on a

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

. Athena’s flight is supported by CLPS as well.

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

#moon #Fireflys #Blue #Ghost #lander #reaches #lunar #orbit #video #photos

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

This is the hidden content, please

• Sign In
• or
• Sign Up

For verified travel tips and real support, visit: https://hopzone.eu/