Tag: The moon

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander made the most of its last few hours of life on the moon. The solar-powered Blue Ghost shut down on Sunday evening (March 16), shortly after the sun set over its lunar locale. The lander watched our star’s descent and disappearance over the cratered horizon, capturing the oncoming, killing darkness in a poignant video that Firefly shared with the world today (March 18). “These are the first high-definition images taken of the sun going down and then going into darkness at the horizon [on…

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The historic mission of Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander is over. The solar-powered Blue Ghost went dark on Sunday evening (March 16) after the sun set on its lunar locale, bringing an end to a highly successful two weeks of surface operations on the moon. “We battle-tested every system on the lander and simulated every mission scenario we could think of to get to this point,” Blue Ghost Chief Engineer Will Coogan said in a Firefly statement today (March 17) that announced the end of the mission. “But what…

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Blue Ghost had its eyes wide open during its epic moon landing last weekend. On Sunday (March 2), Blue Ghost — built and operated by the Texas-based company Firefly Aerospace — became just the second private spacecraft ever to soft-land on the moon, coming to rest in the near side’s Mare Crisium (“Sea of Crises”) region. We can now relive Blue Ghost’s historic descent, thanks to stunning footage captured by the lander. Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander captured this shot of its own shadow on the moon just after…

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The private Resilience moon lander now has a target touchdown date. The Tokyo-based company ispace, which built and operates Resilience, announced Monday (March 3) that it’s eyeing June 5 for the spacecraft’s lunar touchdown attempt. The current plan calls for Resilience to land that day at 3:24 p.m. EST (2024 GMT) near the center of Mare Frigoris (“Sea of Cold”), a basaltic plain in the moon‘s northern reaches. But that’s not set in stone. An image of Earth taken by the private Resilience lunar lander on Feb. 18, 2025. (Image…

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Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander has captured a gorgeous shot of sunrise on the moon as it begins its workday on the lunar surface. Blue Ghost aced its lunar landing attempt on Sunday (March 2), setting down close to Mons Latreille, a solitary lunar peak in the vast basin Mare Crisium (“Sea of Crises”) in the northeastern region of the moon’s near side. And the spacecraft is already getting to work, starting up its science payloads and capturing amazing images of its surroundings and the distant Earth from the lunar…

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A newly launched lunar lander just captured some stunning shots of its home planet. Athena, the second moon lander from Houston-based company Intuitive Machines, launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida’s Space Coast on Wednesday evening (Feb. 26). Shortly after deploying into the final frontier, Athena snapped a few selfies with Earth in the background, including one that shows the Falcon 9‘s upper stage drifting in the void beneath the lander. (Bright specks visible near the rocket stage may be some of the other payloads that launched with…

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Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander is sharing some amazing views from just above the moon. Blue Ghost beamed home gorgeous, up-close shots of the moon‘s far side on Feb. 24, just after lowering its orbit ahead of a Sunday morning (March 2) landing attempt. “That feeling you get when you look out the window and realize you’re almost home!” Texas-based Firefly wrote in a Feb. 26 X post, which shared a 93-second video of the Blue Ghost footage. Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander snapped this shot of the…

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The private Resilience lunar lander just got its first up-close look at the moon. Resilience, which was built by Japanese company ispace, aced a flyby of the moon on Friday evening (Feb. 14), coming within a mere 5,220 miles (8,400 kilometers) of Earth’s nearest neighbor. The lander memorialized the milestone with a photo, snapping a nice shot of the battered lunar surface from a distance of 8,972 miles (14,439 km). The close encounter was “a historic first of its type for a Japanese private, commercial lunar lander,” according to ispace.…

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On Nov. 14, 2024, the Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) of the Russian Academy of Sciences marked the successful completion of SIRIUS-23, a year-long biomedical isolation experiment simulating the conditions of deep-space travel and lunar surface operations. For 366 days, a crew of six analog astronauts lived and worked in a sealed environment, a meticulously controlled Earth-based stand-in for interplanetary missions of the future. The SIRIUS (Scientific International Research in Unique terrestrial Station) project, launched in collaboration with NASA’s Human Research Program and the IBMP in 2017, had previously conducted…

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The Artemis Accords has just gained its 53rd member nation, bolstering NASA’s efforts to establish peaceful and cooperative international space exploration. Finland joined NASA’s Artemis Accords on Jan. 21 through a signing ceremony that took place on the sidelines of the Winter Satellite Workshop 2025 in Espoo, Finland. The signing makes the Nordic country the latest to commit to the safe and responsible exploration of space that benefits humanity, according to a NASA statement. “Finland has been part of the space exploration community for decades with Finnish companies and research…

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