A Cedar Park-based aerospace company designed the lunar lander that successfully launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket early Wednesday morning, with the aim of landing on the moon in March.
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander launched at 1:11 a.m. Wednesday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the SpaceX rocket before separating 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 on-orbit and 14 days on the surface of the moon.
The mission brings 10 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 news release about the mission, include surface drilling, sample collections, X-ray images and dust mitigation.
Blue Ghost will also take photos of a total eclipse when the Earth blocks the sun from the Moon’s surface as well as photos of the lunar sunset, which was last documented by astronaut Eugene Cernan on the Apollo 17 mission to the moon.
The Blue Ghost mission is one of four 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 lunar landing on March 2.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Firefly Aerospace, NASA launch mission to Moon with SpaceX rocket