Blue Ghost Spacecraft Captures Sunrise From its Position on the Moon

Matt Growcoot
A dazzling sunburst over a cratered lunar surface, with radiant light beams extending outward. The landscape features numerous small craters, creating a textured appearance against the dramatic sky.
The Moon’s craters light up as the Sun breaks across the lunar surface.

The Blue Ghost spacecraft which successfully stuck a lunar landing on Sunday has captured an epic sunrise photo from the Moon’s perspective.

“Rise and shine! Firefly’s #BlueGhost lander captured its first sunrise on the Moon, marking the beginning of the lunar day and the start of surface operations in its new home,” writes Firefly Aerospace, the company that operates the spacecraft, on X (formerly Twitter).

“Our Ghost Riders have already begun operating many of the 10 NASA payloads aboard the lander and will continue operations over the next two weeks and into the lunar night.”

A single lunar day equates to two weeks Earth time so Blue Ghost will have plenty of sunlight to conduct its experiments. The Ghost Riders the Tweet refers to are Firefly Aerospace’s 700-strong employees who will now start working on the 10 NASA science payloads onboard.

Space reports that the instruments aboard Blue Ghost will look at lunar composition, geology, and heat flow on the Moon as well as space weather. Its camera won’t just be used for taking pretty pictures: it will capture lunar dust levitating on the surface as it tests drilling technology.

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 made its historic lunar landing this morning, March 2, at 3:34 AM EST. Firefly is only the second private company to achieve a soft lunar landing, and the Blue Ghost lander is carrying a payload of NASA scientific equipment as part of the CLPS and Artemis lunar mission programs.

“Every single thing was clockwork, even when we landed,” Firefly CEO Jason Kim told media. “We got some moon dust on our boots.”

A dark silhouette of a spacecraft casts a shadow on the lunar surface under a vivid black sky. Earth appears as a small, bright circle above the horizon, highlighting the stark contrast between the moon's surface and the void of space.
‘Blue Ghost’s shadow seen on the Moon’s surface!’ Firefly Aerospace said of Blue Ghost’s first beautiful photo from the surface of the Moon.

Firefly hopes that Blue Ghost will become the first lander to capture a lunar sunset. Just before nightfall on the Moon, Blue Ghost’s imager will try to capture the “lunar horizon glow,” a remarkable phenomenon during which dust on the Moon briefly levitates above the surface. Astronauts first observed this while in orbit during Apollo 15. Blue Ghost will also perform X-ray imaging, capture high-definition video, and drill into the Moon’s surface.

Image credits: Firefly Aerospace / NASA

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