Blue Ghost launched this morning, headed to the moon

Blue Ghost launched to the moon this morning

At 6:11 UTC (1:11 a.m. EST) on January 15, 2025, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander launched successfully from Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Fired into orbit atop a Space X Falcon 9 rocket, the craft is headed for the moon, where it’s scheduled to land on March 2, 2025.

Firefly Aerospace is a private company near Austin, Texas, that NASA contracted to take science payloads to the moon. This is the first mission to the moon for the Blue Ghost lunar lander, and the company has dubbed the mission Ghost Riders in the Sky. The lander is aiming for Mare Crisium, a dark plain you can see with the unaided eye on the right edge of a full moon.

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How will Blue Ghost get to the moon?

The mission will spend about 45 days getting to the moon. For the first 25 days, Blue Ghost will orbit Earth. Then it will head toward the moon, which should take approximately four days. It will then orbit the moon for 16 days. During transit, it will perform health checks and begin some of its science experiments. The lander will then reach the surface, where it will operate for 14 days.

Remember that on the moon, it takes 14 Earth days to go from sunrise to sunset. And then another 14 Earth days from sunset to sunrise. So when night descends on the lander, Firefly expects it to operate for the first five-plus hours of darkness before its solar-powered batteries run out.

Science payloads

NASA has 10 science payloads onboard Blue Ghost. Some of the tasks Blue Ghost has on the lunar surface will be to take soil samples, drill below the surface and capture images of the lunar sunset. NASA will also be testing a computer designed to withstand high doses of radiation, measuring the solar wind’s interaction with Earth’s magnetosphere and analyzing the pesky lunar dust that adheres to everything, among other activities.

NASA wants to learn more about the lunar environment before the Artemis astronauts make their first landing on the moon. That mission, Artemis 3, is currently scheduled for 2027.

Bottom line: Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost spacecraft launched successfully this morning. It’s headed to the moon, where it will conduct science experiments for NASA before powering down when the long lunar night arrives.

Read about the first private company to land on the moon – Intuitive Machines – with its Odysseus spacecraft on February 22, 2024