NASA Orbiter Captures Stunning View of Blue Ghost Lander on the Moon – Gizmodo
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter managed to capture a photo of Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander on the surface of the Moon, in a stunning instance of the orbiter’s surveillance power.Ghosts are notoriously hard to photograph, and this (very real) commercial spacecraft is no different. Blue Ghost landed on the Moon early Sunday morning, finishing a 45-day journey to our rocky satellite. The lander touched down in Mare Crisium (which literally translates to “Sea of Crises”), a crater formed by an ancient asteroid impact on the Moon. Remarkable landing footage from Blue Ghost itself was revealed yesterday, showing the lunar surface in sharp relief.LRO took the image when it was roughly 109 miles (175 kilometers) east of the Blue Ghost landing site; the image was taken with the orbiter’s Narrow Angle Cameras on March 2, 2025.If you were expecting a high-res image of the lander you may be in for a disappointment. The NASA LRO image was taken from lunar orbit, so it’s hard to spot the little lander—it’s actually a single pixel in the image above. If you look closely, the Blue Ghost is the white splotch casting a shadow in the middle of the box. The base of Mons Latreille, a lunar mountain in Mare Crisium, can be seen in the lower left corner of the full image.The lunar lander’s mission is dubbed Ghost Riders in the Sky and involves 10 NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) demonstration instruments. You can keep up to date with the lander’s first mission on the Firefly website.Since the lander touched down on the lunar surface, it has begun deploying its payloads, sampling Moon rock (or regolith), and taking additional photos from the surface. It will spend two weeks (a lunar day) analyzing the topside of our satellite, using NASA instruments that will help scientists understand the Moon in preparation for a more sustained human presence on its surface.
Fireflyfirefly aerospaceLunar sciencethe moon
Get the best tech, science, and culture news in your inbox daily.
News from the future, delivered to your present.
Please select your desired newsletters and submit your email to upgrade your inbox.
Athena is scheduled for touchdown on Thursday at 12:32 p.m. ET and hopes to succeed where its predecessor faltered.
Blue Ghost not only aced its touchdown, it filmed a breathtaking video in the process.
The lander will spend the next two weeks exploring the site of an ancient impact on the Moon.
After 45 days, Firefly Aerospace’s lander is preparing for its big moment, and you can watch it live right here.
The two spacecraft were designed under low budgets, and the status of both is already in doubt.
A SpaceX Falcon 9, carrying the SPHEREx and PUNCH missions, is scheduled to lift off on Tuesday, March 4 at 10:09 p.m. ET.
Best of CES 2025 Awards ➜We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our sites.
©2025 GIZMODO USA LLC. All rights reserved.Mode
Follow us
Mode
Follow us
Source: https://gizmodo.com/nasa-orbiter-captures-stunning-view-of-blue-ghost-lander-on-the-moon-2000572048
