Blue Ghost's main mission will be research. It will hang out in Earth's orbit for 25 days taking measurements and waiting for the right time to fling itself to the moon. After four days in transit, Blue Ghost will spend 16 days in lunar orbit collecting more data before descending to Mare Crisium, one of the largest basins on the moon.

The spacecraft built and operated by Texas-based Firefly Aerospace launched in the early Monday hours from Florida aboard a SpaceX rocket.

The payloads will be delivered to the moon via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket being launched at 1:11 a.m. Eastern time (12:11 a.m. Central time) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. From there, the lander will spend 45 days in space before landing on the Moon's surface to conduct its research.

An illustration of a private U.S. lander on the surface of the moon built by Texas-based company Firefly Aerospace. The company’s Blue Ghost lander is carrying a suite of scientific instruments to the moon, including an experiment to detect and use GPS satellite signals on the lunar surface.

Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander launched at 1:11 a.m. Wednesday from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the SpaceX rocket before separating an hour later. The lunar lander — part of a mission known as Blue Ghost Mission 1 or Ghost Riders in the Sky — will spend 45 days in orbit and 14 days on the surface of the moon.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral on Wednesday morning carrying two private lunar landers into orbit in support of NASA’s future Artemis landing crews. The Blue Ghost and Resilience landers,

The mission featured two robotic lunar landers: one from Texas-based Firefly Aerospace and another from the Japanese space company ispace. Both landers, each roughly the size

Firefly's Blue Ghost lunar lander has launched from Kennedy Space Center Pad 39A, and is on a 45-day journey to the moon for NASA.

The two robotic lunar landers —one from Firefly Aerospace based near Austin, Texas, and another from the Japanese space company ispace—will use their own small engines for the final maneuvers required to enter orbit around the Moon in the coming months.

In a two-for-one moonshot, SpaceX launched a pair of lunar landers Wednesday for U.S. and Japanese companies looking to jumpstart business on Earth's dusty sidekick.