CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — Get ready, moon: Two private landers have made it to space and will soon be headed your way!
The two lunar landers — Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost and Resilience, built by the Japanese company ispace — lifted off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket early this morning (Jan. 15) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) here on Florida’s Space Coast.
The Falcon 9 launched at 1:11 a.m. EST (0611 GMT) beneath a full moon and a clear, starry sky. The rocket’s first stage came back to Earth as planned, touching down on SpaceX’s “Just Read the Instructions” droneship, stationed miles offshore in the Atlantic Ocean, about 8.5 minutes after liftoff.
The first stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket rests on the deck of a droneship shortly after launching the Blue Ghost and Resilience moon landers on Jan. 15, 2025. (Image credit: NASA)
The rocket’s second stage continued onward and upward as planned, delivering Blue Ghost to a lunar transfer orbit about 65 minutes after launch and deploying Resilience 27 minutes later.
