Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost mission, launched earlier this month on a mission to the moon, has captured stunning video of the Earth eclipsing the sun as seen from space. The Blue Ghost lander is currently in orbit around the Earth, adjusting its trajectory so it can head toward the moon over the next several weeks. And while it is there, it has been collecting data using its science instruments and testing out its communication system.
“5 days into our mission and we’ve traveled 220,000 miles while downlinking 1.4 GB of data!” Firefly announced earlier this week. “There’s a long road ahead, but our #GhostRiders have already accomplished so much!”
The company also shared this first image of the lander in space, which shows some of the six NASA payloads that are on board the spacecraft — including an X-ray instrument called LEXI which will look back at the Earth’s magnetosphere from the moon in the X-ray wavelength.
The latest update from the mission is this video clip, showing the Earth moving in front of the sun and creating an eclipse:
In addition, Firefly Aerospace also confirmed that it has acquired a signal from an experiment from NASA and the Italian Space Agency called the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE). This payload was able to make a connection with the global satellite system here on Earth from a distance of 205,674 miles, which is a new record. “This step towards establishing a navigation solution to the Moon marks another successful milestone for Firefly’s payload partners traveling aboard Blue Ghost,” the company wrote.
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“This achievement suggests that Earth-based GNSS constellations can be used for navigation at nearly 90% of the distance to the Moon, an Earth-Moon signal distance record,” NASA wrote about the achievement. “It also demonstrates the power of using multiple GNSS constellations together, such as GPS and Galileo, to perform navigation.”
Now, the Blue Ghost will continue its 25-day orbit of Earth before undertaking a four-day journey to the moon, aiming to enter lunar orbit in early March.