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,

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.

Blue Ghost's final descent to the Moon is tentatively scheduled for March 2. The target landing site is in Mare Crisium, an ancient 350-mile-wide (560-kilometer) impact basin in the northeast part of the near side of the Moon.

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.

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.

Frank Sinatra once crooned, "Fly me to the moon. Let me play among the stars," and for two companies, including one here in Texas, SpaceX granted that wish.

Merritt Island, United States - January 15, 2025 A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches with two commercial lunar landers from Launch Complex-39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on Jan. 15, 2025.

SpaceX launched Firefly Aerospace's "blue ghost" alongside a lander from Japan. They didn't intend to launch together.