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.

A Texas-built lander named Blue Ghost marks another test of NASA’s new lunar delivery initiative

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

Robotic vehicles from Firefly Aerospace of Texas and Ispace of Japan parted ways early Wednesday after being launched on the same SpaceX rocket. Both are aiming for the lunar surface.

In a groundbreaking effort to enhance lunar exploration, NASA has launched the Blue Ghost Mission 1, featuring a suite of scientific investigations and technology demonstrations aboard a Firefly Aerospace spacecraft.

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a pair of lunar landers into space early Wednesday, sending Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost and ispace's Resilience on their lengthy journeys to the moon.

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.

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.

Cedar Park company sent a spacecraft to space The Blue Ghost Lunar Lander launched on the SpaceX Falcon 9 to space on Jan. 15 Spacecraft will spend the next 45 days orbiting the Earth before touching down on the moon for two weeks CEDAR PARK,