The latest private lunar lander is a little closer to its destination. Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost fired its engines early in the morning of February 18, marking the latest stage in its 45-day long trip to the Moon.
The engine burn, which started at 3:09 a.m. ET and lasted three minutes and 18 seconds, moved the lander, which had been in a high elliptical orbit around the Moon since February 13, into a lower orbit. From its new vantage point 75 miles (120 kilometers) above the surface, Blue Ghost was able to capture new imagery of the far side of the Moon and relay it back to Earth.
Our #GhostRiders completed another lunar orbit maneuver with a 3 minute, 18 second burn early this morning. This maneuver moved the lander from a high elliptical orbit to a much lower elliptical orbit around the Moon. Shortly after the burn, Blue Ghost captured incredible footage… pic.twitter.com/ygyMVpaBW4
— Firefly Aerospace (@Firefly_Space) February 18, 2025
While necessary to get Blue Ghost ready for its planned March 2 landing attempt, the change does come with a downside, as there will be periods of temporary communication blackouts between the craft and its caretakers at the Texas-based Firefly.
The 45-day itinerary between planetary takeoff and lunar touchdown also allowed Blue Ghost’s handlers to calibrate the onboard instruments. If all goes as planned, Blue Ghost will settle into its new home in an area of the Moon known as Mare Crisium, or Sea of Crises. The basin was formed by an ancient asteroid collision, and was once filled with basaltic lava. The lander’s 10 instruments will be put to work analyzing heat flow from the Moon’s interior, magnetic and electric fields on the surface, and the chemical composition of lunar soil. The mission will also test technology that could play a part in NASA’s Artemis missions, which are aimed at putting human boots on the Moon for the first time since 1972.
Blue Ghost has taken a somewhat circuitous road on its journey to the lunar surface. Rather than a straight shot from the Kennedy Space Center to the Moon, its journey included several weeks in orbit around Earth following its January 15 launch. During that time, its cameras caught some spectacular shots of our planet, even taking a selfie or two.
Blue Ghost is just the latest private lander to attempt a Moon landing, though results have been mixed on that front. In April 2023, Japanese company ispace’s Hakuto-R M1 lander crashed while attempting its touchdown.
Astrobotic’s Peregrine, the first private American attempt at a landing, also didn’t fare well, suffering a catastrophic failure shortly after launching in January 2024. Just over a month later, Intuitive Machine’s Odysseus succeeded where Peregrine failed, though it suffered a broken leg that left it lopsided on the Moon.
Should Blue Ghost land safely, it’ll have some new company in short order. ispace is trying its luck again with its Resilience lander, launched on the same Falcon 9 rocket as Blue Ghost. That spacecraft has taken a slower approach to the Moon, and will attempt a landing sometime in May or June. Aboard the lander is the Tenacious rover, which will hopefully be used to examine the lunar soil around Resilience’s planned landing spot on the Moon’s far north.
If that’s not enough Moon exploration for you, Intuitive Machines also has another mission which could launch as soon as next week. That mission will include a robot designed to hop across the surface to explore a crater that’s in a permanent shadow.