Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 lunar lander – which is already circling the moon – will touch down on the lunar surface on Sunday, March 2! But before that EarthSky will get an exclusive insider look at the mission and the lander. At 12:15 p.m. CST (18:15 UTC) on Thursday, February 27, Firefly’s future systems architect Kevin Scholtes joins EarthSky’s Dave Adalian to give us a mission overview and landing preview!
Blue Ghost on track for March 2 moon landing
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost is orbiting the moon. As of February 24, 2025, it has completed its 3rd and final lunar orbit. Soon, it’ll begin its descent to the lunar surface. The spacecraft is still on track for a March 2 lunar landing with the expected landing time of 2:45 a.m. CST. It captured the beautiful video below during one of its lunar orbits. Note also the distant crescent Earth and the bright sun.
Credit: Firefly Aerospace
— EarthSky (@earthskyscience.bsky.social) February 25, 2025 at 10:06 AM
Click on the play button above to watch a breathtaking video of Blue Ghost as it orbits the moon. Can you spy Earth in the distance?
Firefly Aerospace reports that all 10 NASA payloads aboard Blue Ghost remain healthy. We eagerly await its landing! You can watch the landing in the player below.
And here’s a second video of Blue Ghost orbiting the moon. Firefly Aerospace released this one on February 26, 2025.
Blue Ghost launched to the moon on January 15
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 rising full moon.
How will Blue Ghost get to the moon?
The mission needed about 45 days to get to the moon. For the first 25 days, Blue Ghost orbited Earth. Then it headed toward the moon, which took approximately four days. It then orbited the moon for 16 days. During transit, it performed health checks and began 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 will land on the moon in 6 days! In the meantime, it has recorded its orbit around the moon.
Read about the first private company to land on the moon – Intuitive Machines – with its Odysseus spacecraft on February 22, 2024
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