CEDAR PARK, Texas — A private spacecraft is set to land on the moon this weekend.
Cedar Park-based Firefly Aerospace built the Blue Ghost lunar lander for a mission with NASA. The spacecraft is delivering a fleet of NASA instruments to study the moon’s environment ahead of human exploration.
The equipment will stay on the moon for one lunar day – about two weeks on Earth – doing things like drilling, sample collection and X-ray imaging.
Blue Ghost has already captured an up-close view of the moon, showcasing its far side, which is never visible from Earth.
That feeling you get when you look out the window and realize you’re almost home! T-4 days until we land in the Moon. Blue Ghost will reach her final destination no earlier than 2:34 am CST on March 2. We’ll start the joint livestream with @NASA at 1:20 am CST, approximately 75… pic.twitter.com/t5TN85zpmM
— Firefly Aerospace (@Firefly_Space) February 26, 2025
Ahead of the spacecraft’s anticipated landing, KVUE spoke with Firefly’s future systems architect, Kevin Scholtes, to hear about the mood of the mission.
“It’s tremendous. It’s an honor. It’s a privilege. It’s incredible to be trusted by NASA to take on a mission of this nature,” Scholtes said. “The Firefly team, of course, is just giddy like children, you know, getting to engage with the universe in a completely new way, for a whole new generation. It’s hard to describe.”
“We’ve had a wonderful mission so far. We’ve had a great chance to ease into operations and get a feel for the vehicle’s performance and help support the payloads. So we’re looking very positively at what comes next,” Scholtes added. “That being said, this is big league kind of hard stuff to do. So cautious optimism is the best way to describe it.”
As of Friday afternoon, Blue Ghost is on track for its scheduled moon landing early Sunday morning.
The spacecraft launched out of Florida on Jan. 15 for its 45-day journey.