Lunar explorer Blue Ghost snaps astounding solar eclipse pictures on the moon's surface - view the awe-inspiring photographs here.
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Amidst parts of our planet witnessing a total lunar eclipse early Friday, a spacecraft nestled on the moon caught the event from an extraordinary view – a solar eclipse that presented as a fiery ring in outer space.
The Blue Ghost lunar lander, making the moon its home since its successful touchdown on March 2, captured images of the sun, Earth, and moon aligning around 4:30 a.m. ET, as announced publicly by the Texas-based private space company, Firefly Aerospace, on Friday.
The lander recorded the famous "diamond ring" effect, which occurs when light from the sun trickles through right before totality – in this instance, when the Earth entirely blocked the sun – and after.
Firefly Aerospace shared videos assembled from numerous images the lander swiftly captured during the solar eclipse, exhibiting the spacecraft adopting a deep red tint as sunlight was refracted through Earth's atmosphere, resulting in a shadow cast on the lunar surface.
"Firefly's Blue Ghost lunar lander had the rare chance to operate on the Moon and capture the initial (high-definition) imagery of a total solar eclipse on March 14," Will Coogan, Blue Ghost's lead engineer, stated in an email. "This is the first time in history a commercial company has ever been operational during an eclipse on the Moon, and we're damned proud of the imagery we've downlinked so far."
The images transmitted after the lander's X-band antenna – the device used to transmit data and images back from the vehicle – warmed up following the cold temperatures during the eclipse-induced darkness, as shared by Firefly Aerospace on X.
"Operating for nearly 5 hours of darkness during a total eclipse is as tough as operating during the lunar night – temperatures on the Moon can quickly drop below -100°C (-148 degrees Fahrenheit) and there's no sunlight to supply power, so the lander was just running on battery power," Coogan explained in an email. "Yet this team keeps pushing boundaries and accomplishing the impossible."
A spacecraft has recorded an eclipse on the moon's surface just one other time. In 1967, NASA's Surveyor 3 lander, which was sent to accumulate data in anticipation of the Apollo missions, captured a series of images illuminating the first sight of an eclipse from another celestial body.
The Blue Ghost lander has been retelling its galactic journey since it departed Earth on January 15, delivering breathtaking imagery of the moon and Earth. Next, Firefly plans to capture the lunar sunset on Sunday.
During lunar sunsets, a peculiar occurrence, known as the moon's horizon glow, happens, believed to be caused by sunlight scattering through floating electrostatic particles, according to NASA.
Firefly CEO Jason Kim has confided to CNN that he is eager to confirm this event.
"There's a phenomenon known as the lunar horizon glow that only the Apollo 15 and 17 astronauts have observed with their own eyes," Kim disclosed. "We're going to manage to capture that in 4K-by-4K high-definition video and share it with the rest of the world."
Apart from sharing the imagery, Blue Ghost is carrying 10 NASA scientific and technological instruments as part of the space agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, initiative.
CLPS is a segment of NASA's broader Artemis program, which intends to place astronauts on the moon for the first time in over 50 years. The instruments now work to gather data mainly on the moon's subsurface, such as lunar dust and regolith, the loose rocks and mineral fragments that cover the lunar surface.
Shortly following the sunset, the lander will continue to operate for several hours during the lunar midnight before the period of darkness and cold temperatures are anticipated to cause the spacecraft to halt operations.
- The solar eclipse on the moon was captured by the Blue Ghost lunar lander, marking a significant milestone in the field of space science.
- The diamond ring effect, a spectacle that occurs near totality during a solar eclipse, was documented by the Blue Ghost lunar lander on March 14.
- NASA's Surveyor 3 lander is the only other spacecraft known to have recorded an eclipse on the moon's surface, having done so in 1967.
