Spacecraft headed to the moon captures amazing new view of Earth – MLive.com
This photo provided by Firefly Aerospace shows Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander captures the Blue Marble while in Earth orbit on Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025. (Firefly Aerospace via AP)APBy MARCIA DUNN AP Aerospace WriterCAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A private U.S. spacecraft bound for the moon has captured stunning images of Earth one week into its flight.Still circling Earth, Firefly Aerospace’s lunar lander fired its thrusters Thursday to put it on a path to reach the moon in over a month. Dubbed Blue Ghost, the spacecraft beamed back photos and video of the Blue Marble, our planet. The Texas company released the images Friday.It carries experiments for NASA, part of the space agency’s effort to return astronauts to the moon this decade.Blue Ghost is one of two lunar landers launched from Florida by SpaceX on Jan. 15. It’s targeting a moon touchdown on March 2. The other lander is sponsored by the Japanese company ispace and taking an even longer route, with a landing in late May or early June.It’s the first moonshot for Firefly and the second for ispace, which crashed its first lander into the moon in 2023. Tokyo-based ispace’s latest lander, Resilience, is still orbiting Earth and performing all its maneuvers to close in on the moon.___The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement, (updated 8/1/2024) and acknowledgement of our Privacy Policy, and Your Privacy Choices and Rights (updated 1/1/2025).© 2025 Advance Local Media LLC. All rights reserved (About Us). The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Advance Local.Community Rules apply to all content you upload or otherwise submit to this site.YouTube’s privacy policy is available here and YouTube’s terms of service is available here.Ad Choices
