A private spacecraft is heading to the Moon.
It has taken pictures of “the Blue Marble,” our planet Earth. The spacecraft owned by Firefly Aerospace is called “The Blue Ghost,” and on Thursday fired thrusters that will allow the lunar lander to reach its destination in early March.
The mission is dubbed “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” and the mission’s client is NASA.
Launched with it, from the same SpaceX rocket on January 15, 2025, is a lunar lander from Japan’s ispace, Resilience, making the launch a double shot at Earth’s satellite.
Resilience is still in orbit, and is expected to land on the Moon before July. According to Space.com, “Resilience is packed with five science payloads. These come mainly from commercial and academic partners, while one is a micro moon rover developed by ispace’s Luxembourg-based subsidiary that will drive the mission’s initial resource exploration activities.”
See also articles at The Epoch Times (AP) and AOL (Reuters).
Paul Jacob has been covering the advance of private spacefaring for almost as long as Common Sense with Paul Jacob has been in publication.