Firefly Aerospace's moon-bound spacecraft has provided the closest thing to a reflecting pool in space, showing Earth as an imposing monument, stacked on top of another Earth.
The illusion is a new photo taken earlier this week by the Blue Ghost lander, expected to attempt a touchdown on the moon on March 2. The image showcases two blue marbles, thanks to its mirror-smooth solar panel.
The faint dot above Earth, which can be seen in the uncropped image below, is actually the moon, a destination to which it's since gotten much closer. Also pictured is the spacecraft's X-band antenna and a NASA instrument intended to capture the first global view of Earth's magnetic field.
Blue Ghost completed its translunar injection, a maneuver that puts the spacecraft on a moon-bound trajectory, on Feb. 8.
"It's a very precisely timed shot," said Joseph Marlin, deputy chief engineer, in a video update on the mission. "Think of it as kind of throwing to someone who's running across the field ahead of you. You have to kind of lead the shot."
Firefly's lander, originally scheduled to lift off in late 2024, is the first NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services mission of the year. The program has invested $2.6 billion in contracts with vendors from the private sector to help deliver instruments to the moon and send back crucial data.
The company is carrying 10 experiments for the space agency. NASA wants to see a regular cadence of moon missions to prepare for astronaut-led Artemis expeditions in 2027 or later.
After escaping Earth's gravitational pull, the journey takes about four days to arrive at the moon. But Firefly intends to spend a couple of weeks in lunar orbit before dropping Blue Ghost, named after an exotic type of firefly, to the surface. The procedure to descend is expected to take about one hour.
The mission seems to be going smoothly, but the team hasn't encountered the hardest part yet. Landing on the moon is onerous. The moon's exosphere provides virtually no drag to slow a spacecraft down as it approaches the ground. Furthermore, there are no GPS systems on the moon to help guide a craft to its landing spot. Then there's the fact that everything is about six times tippier on the moon to overcome.
So far just one company (as opposed to space agency), Intuitive Machines, has made the robotic journey all the way through lunar touchdown. Its craft landed sideways near the moon's south pole in February 2024, still managing to operate from its awkward position.
