Witness the Earth rising and setting behind the moon in newly released Blue Ghost footage.

      The Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost mission is gearing up for its significant lunar landing attempt this week. As it orbits the moon, the spacecraft continues to capture amazing footage of Earth and its lunar companion. A recent video from the mission depicts Earth both setting and rising behind the moon, shortly after the spacecraft executed its second lunar orbit maneuver.

      In the video, the moon appears prominently in front of the Blue Ghost spacecraft while Earth is shown as a tiny crescent in the backdrop. As the spacecraft travels in its lunar orbit, Earth vanishes behind the moon but re-emerges as Blue Ghost passes by. This serves as a vivid reminder that, despite the moon's relative proximity in cosmic terms, Earth remains a mere speck in the distance.

      “Footage above showing the Earth rising and setting behind the Moon was captured by Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander shortly after our second lunar orbit maneuver on February 18,” Firefly Aerospace noted in an update. “The image also displays Blue Ghost’s solar panel, X-band antenna (left), and LEXI payload (right) on the top deck.”

      In addition to sharing this video from the second maneuver, Firefly confirmed that Blue Ghost has completed its third and final lunar orbit maneuver. The spacecraft engaged its engines for 16 seconds, adjusting its orbit to position itself closer to the moon in a near-circular low lunar orbit.

      However, the primary challenge remains, as Blue Ghost is set to attempt a soft landing on the moon this Sunday, March 2. If successful, it will mark only the second landing ever conducted by a commercial entity on the lunar surface. To prepare for the landing, the spacecraft will fire its engines again at its closest approach to the moon, performing a maneuver known as the Descent Orbital Insertion. The target landing site is Mare Crisium, a basin located on the northeastern side of the moon's near side.

      The spacecraft is also carrying a range of experiments and tests related to lunar technology, including several payloads from NASA, aimed at trialing concepts prior to human missions to the moon under the Artemis program. Moreover, NASA announced this week that one of these experiments, the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE), successfully detected a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signal from a distance of 246,000 miles, setting a new record for the technology.

      Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost mission, which launched earlier this month aimed at the moon, has captured remarkable video of Earth eclipsing the sun as viewed from space. The Blue Ghost lander is currently orbiting Earth, refining its trajectory for a lunar approach over the coming weeks, all the while gathering data with its scientific instruments and testing its communication systems.

      "Five days into our mission, we've traveled 220,000 miles while downlinking 1.4 GB of data!" Firefly reported this week. "The road ahead is long, but our #GhostRiders have already achieved so much!"

      In other news, Blue Origin successfully launched its New Glenn rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida early Thursday morning after a second attempt.

      Earlier today, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost mission lifted off toward the moon, carrying various NASA scientific instruments and technology demonstrations. The mission launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1:11 a.m. ET on January 15. Its goal is to achieve a soft landing on the moon, which would represent only the second landing by a private company following the Intuitive Machines Odyssey landing last year. These landings are part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which aims to have private companies deliver NASA's scientific payloads to the moon in preparation for human exploration as part of the Artemis mission.