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- The Texas-based company Firefly Aerospace is flying its first moon mission, called Blue Ghost.
- New photos show how far the spacecraft is traveling for its moon landing attempt on March 2.
- Photos like these are rare since NASA ended the Apollo program 52 years ago, but a new era is beginning.
A new mission to land on the moon is beaming back stunning photos that put our world into perspective.
Look closely at the above image. There are two worlds in the photo. The moon is a tiny dot in the distance, visible below Earth.
The photo comes from the uncrewed Blue Ghost spacecraft, built by the Texas-based company Firefly Aerospace. The mission is en route to descend to the lunar surface on March 2.
Success would make Firefly the second private company to ever land on the moon, just one year after a historic touchdown by Intuitive Machines.
The mission is a harbinger of a new era in space, where companies race to the moon to build the infrastructure for a future economy of lunar tourism, mining, and exploration.
Photos from the Blue Ghost spacecraft
The below image, which Firefly released on February 12, shows Earth reflecting off the spacecraft’s solar panel. Believe it or not, the moon is in this photo, too. See it?
On its way to the moon, the spacecraft has crossed over 715,000 miles in space.
As it crept closer to the moon, the spacecraft conducted a critical engine burn to insert itself into lunar orbit, where it’s set to hang out until it’s time for landing.
A few hours after the burn, the spacecraft sent its first up-close images of the moon.
“I almost started crying because we’re finally at the moon,” Ray Allensworth, the director of Firefly’s spacecraft program, told Business Insider.
Looking at the photos is “really surreal,” she said.
Blue Ghost has 10 experiments and plans to capture a lunar sunset
Blue Ghost is carrying 10 experiments and instruments for NASA, including a system to collect samples of moon dust and a radiation-tolerant computer that will test whether the technology can survive the extreme radiation on the moon.
If the mission successfully lands on the moon, its payloads are set to operate for about 14 days, which is a complete lunar day.
If all goes to plan, one of its final acts will be to capture the lunar sunset, studying how the sun causes moon dust to levitate, a mysterious phenomenon observed by Apollo astronaut Eugene Cernan.
Until then, Blue Ghost is orbiting the moon while its human operators prepare for landing.
Photos from fresh new spacecraft headed to the moon have been scarce since NASA ended the Apollo program, with no US moon landings since 1972 until last year’s Intuitive Machines mission. These images could become common again, though, if Firefly has its way.
“Ultimately, our goal is that we’re going to the moon at least yearly and hopefully increase that cadence over time,” Allensworth said.
