HomeTop StoriesFirefly Aerospace and NASA successfully launch mission to the moon

Firefly Aerospace and NASA successfully launch mission to the moon

A Cedar Park-based aerospace company designed the lunar lander that was successfully launched early Wednesday morning on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, aiming to land on the moon in March.

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1:11 a.m. Wednesday on the SpaceX rocket before breaking up an hour later. The lunar lander – part of a mission known as Blue Ghost Mission 1 or Ghost Riders in the Sky – will spend 45 days in orbit and 14 days on the moon’s surface.

The mission will deliver ten science and technology instruments to the moon as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, which allows commercial companies to send certain technology experiments to the moon to help NASA better prepare for human missions. These demonstrations, according to a press release about the mission, include surface drilling, sample collections, X-rays and dust reduction.

Blue Ghost will also capture images of a total solar eclipse when Earth blocks the sun from the moon’s surface, as well as images of the lunar sunset, which was last documented by astronaut Eugene Cernan during the Apollo 17 mission to the moon.

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The Blue Ghost mission is one of four missions Firefly is working on as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. The initiative is part of NASA’s larger Artemis campaign to establish a long-term presence on the moon and prepare for the exploration of Mars.

Blue Ghost is scheduled for a moon landing on March 2.

This article originally appeared in Austin American-Statesman: Firefly Aerospace, NASA launch mission to the moon on a SpaceX rocket

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