Firefly Aerospace launches Blue Ghost Lunar Lander on a SpaceX rocket, embarking on a 45-day journey to conduct scientific experiments on the moon.

Blue Ghost's main mission will be research. It will hang out in Earth's orbit for 25 days taking measurements and waiting for the right time to fling itself to the moon. After four days in transit, Blue Ghost will spend 16 days in lunar orbit collecting more data before descending to Mare Crisium, one of the largest basins on the moon.

The Blue Ghost Lunar Lander soared out of the Florida coastline and into space, shining as bright as a Central Texas firefly in the summertime. "It's an incredible privilege, and it's hard to fully understand the extent of that impact," said Kevin Scholtes, the future systems architect at Firefly Aerospace.

Firefly's Blue Ghost Mission 1 has taken a significant leap toward the Moon, with its successful second engine burn positioning the spacecraft for lunar orbit. NASA’s science and technology instruments aboard Firefly’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 are making steady progress toward the Moon.