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Wow! Blue Ghost Captures Total Lunar Eclipse from the Moon
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1 lunar lander snapped incredible photographs of the March 13–14 total lunar eclipse, as seen from the moon
A view from the Blue Ghost lander on the moon taken on March 14 around 3:30 A.M. CDT, showing the sun about to emerge from totality behind Earth.
Much of North and South America was treated to a spectacular total lunar eclipse on the night of March 13 into early March 14. Onlookers watched the moon take on a deep ruddy hue as it slipped through Earth’s shadow. But what does such an event look like from the moon? A recently arrived lunar lander shared its view in stunning new photographs.
The Blue Ghost spacecraft is a NASA-funded commercial lander, that blasted off Earth in January and touched down on the moon on March 2. The spacecraft landed in a region called Mare Crisium, or “Sea of Crises,” a destination selected by scientists in part because they believe it represents the average composition of the moon.
Packed with 10 different science instruments, the lander was designed to last for one lunar day, the equivalent of two weeks on Earth. None of Blue Ghost’s science work was designed around the lunar eclipse, but lucky timing gave the spacecraft a unique view of the celestial spectacle. (A less fortunate commercial lunar mission, the Athena lander from Intuitive Machines, was also slated to witness the eclipse but landed crooked and expired after less than a day on the moon.)
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A view of Earth as seen by Blue Ghost shortly after landing on the moon.
What Did Blue Ghost See?
The event was a lunar eclipse as seen from Earth, but to Blue Ghost, it appeared more like a solar eclipse because the lander saw the Earth blocking the sun’s light. (We’re going to still call it a lunar eclipse for convenience.)
In some respects, Blue Ghost’s observations came with time to spare: unlike the pulse-pounding speed of a total solar eclipse, as seen from Earth, in which totality takes only minutes, a total lunar eclipse lingers as the moon slowly moves through our planet’s shadow. From start to finish, this one lasted a stunning two hours and 16 minutes.
Firefly Aerospace, the Texas-based company that built Blue Ghost, has shared two stunning images from the lander that show what the robot saw from the moon as the lunar eclipse occurred on Earth on its mission updates page.
Above is Blue Ghost’s view of the sun almost fully eclipsed by the Earth—a sight that bears stunning resemblance to Earth’s view of a total solar eclipse, when the moon blocks the full disk of the sun.
A view early in the total solar eclipse showing the blocked sun reflected in Blue Ghost’s solar panel.
What Else Is in Blue Ghost’s Eclipse Images?
A second image shared by Firefly shows a glowing ring of the sun’s light reflected on the lander’s solar panel, visible at the bottom of the photograph. Also on display are three Blue Ghost instruments. On the left is the lander’s large X-band antenna for communicating with Earth. In the middle is the Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI), an instrument that is studying how the solar wind, charged particles that flow from the sun, interacts with the outer reaches of Earth’s magnetic field. And at the right is a tall mast that is part of the Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS), an instrument that is probing our natural satellite’s mysterious depths using strands of electrodes deployed on the moon’s surface.
The astronauts of Apollo 12 captured this photograph during their journey home from the moon in November 1969.
Was This the First Lunar View of Earth Eclipsing the Sun?
Although stunning, the new images do not mark the first time humans have gotten a lunar glimpse of the eclipsed sun. In 1969 astronauts on NASA’s Apollo 12 lunar mission observed Earth block our star during their journey home. More recently, in 2009 a Japanese mission called Kaguya witnessed a penumbral lunar eclipse, a type of eclipse in which Earth slips mostly, but not entirely, between the sun and moon.
Blue Ghost is expected to remain operational for only about two more Earth days before succumbing to the frigid darkness of the two-week-long lunar night.
