Welcome to the moon! Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander reaches lunar orbit (video, photos) – Space.com

Blue Ghost will attempt to land on Earth’s nearest neighbor on March 2.
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Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander has made it to the moon.Blue Ghost fired its engines for four minutes and 15 seconds on Thursday (Feb. 13), injecting itself into an elliptical lunar orbit ahead of a planned touchdown try a little over two weeks from now.The spacecraft commemorated the milestone by snapping some photos, a number of which Firefly stitched into a dramatic, 27-second-long time-lapse video.”I love you to the moon, but not back — I’m staying there,” the Texas-based company wrote (from Blue Ghost’s perspective) today (Feb. 14) in an X post that shared the video.Related: Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander leaves Earth orbit to head for the moonBlue Ghost launched Jan. 15 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The lander’s mission, called “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Blue Ghost is carrying 10 science and technology experiments for the agency, which wants to better understand the lunar environment before sending astronauts back to the moon via its Artemis program.Blue Ghost will spend the next 16 days in lunar orbit, if all goes to plan. It will conduct additional engine burns to circularize its path around Earth’s nearest neighbor, then attempt a landing in the Mare Crisium (“Sea of Crises”) region of the moon’s near side on March 2.Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!Success would be historic. To date, just one private company, Houston-based Intuitive Machines, has soft-landed a spacecraft on the moon. That milestone came in February 2024, when a spacecraft called Odysseus touched down near the lunar south pole, also on a CLPS-backed mission.— Blue Ghost moon lander sees Earth as a ‘blue marble’ from orbit (photo)— Watch Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost moon lander witness an eclipse from space (video) —  Here’s what NASA is sending to the moon on Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar landerBlue Ghost didn’t take flight alone last month; Resilience, a moon lander built by Tokyo-based company ispace, lifted off aboard the same Falcon 9. Resilience’s path to the moon is longer and more circuitous than Blue Ghost’s, however; the Japanese lander is expected to arrive in lunar orbit about 3.5 months from now.Resilience, which isn’t carrying any NASA payloads, is ispace’s second moon lander. The first successfully reached lunar orbit in March 2023 but crashed during its touchdown attempt a month later after getting confused by the rim of a crater.And there’s more moon-mission action coming soon. Intuitive Machines is scheduled to launch its second lunar lander, Athena, on Feb. 26, also on a Falcon 9. Athena’s flight is supported by CLPS as well.Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer with Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, “Out There,” was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor’s degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.Meet ‘Tansuo’ and ‘Wangyu,’ China’s next moon rover and astronaut spacesuit (video)SpaceX test-fires Starship megarocket and Super Heavy booster ahead of next launch (video, photos)How Sen’s 4K live cameras on the ISS offer a new perspective from space (op-ed)
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Source: https://www.space.com/firefly-aerospace-blue-ghost-moon-lander-reachers-lunar-orbit