Abdelrahman
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander has officially reached the moon.
Blue Ghost engaged its engines for four minutes and 15 seconds on Thursday, February 13, positioning itself into an elliptical orbit around the lunar surface in preparation for a landing attempt scheduled for a little over two weeks later.
The spacecraft celebrated this achievement by capturing stunning images, many of which Firefly compiled into an impressive 27-second time-lapse video.
“I love you to the moon, but I won’t be coming back — I’m staying here,” the Texas-based company humorously announced from Blue Ghost’s viewpoint in a Twitter post on February 14, sharing the video.
Related: Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander departs Earth orbit en route to the moon
Launched on January 15, Blue Ghost ascended aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The mission, dubbed “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. Blue Ghost carries 10 scientific and technological experiments for NASA, aimed at gaining insights into the lunar environment in preparation for returning astronauts to the moon via the Artemis program.
If everything proceeds smoothly, Blue Ghost will orbit the moon for the next 16 days, performing additional engine burns to adjust its trajectory before attempting to land in the Mare Crisium (“Sea of Crises”) area on March 2.
A successful landing would be historic. As of now, only one private enterprise, Houston-based Intuitive Machines, has successfully soft-landed a spacecraft on the moon. This landmark achievement took place in February 2024 when the spacecraft named Odysseus landed near the lunar south pole on a CLPS-supported mission.
Blue Ghost was not launched alone last month; it shared the Falcon 9 flight with Resilience, a moon lander developed by the Tokyo-based company ispace. However, Resilience is taking a longer and more indirect route to the moon, with an expected arrival in lunar orbit approximately 3.5 months from now.
This is ispace’s second lunar lander attempt; their first successfully reached lunar orbit in March 2023 but unfortunately crashed during its landing attempt a month later after miscalculating a crater’s edge.
Exciting times are ahead as more lunar missions are on the horizon. Intuitive Machines plans to launch its second lunar lander, Athena, on February 26, also aboard a Falcon 9. Athena’s journey is likewise backed by CLPS.
