Firefly Aerospace launches Blue Ghost Lunar Lander on a SpaceX rocket, embarking on a 45-day journey to conduct scientific experiments on the moon.

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

NASA's Blue Ghost lunar lander is on its way to the moon, soaring through space with a tiny lunar rover called Tenacious. "After all the testing conducted and mission simulations completed, we're now fully focused on execution as we look to complete our on-orbit operations,

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.

The Austin-area space firm’s Blue Ghost mission will gather more information about deep space and lunar environments for eventual crewed missions.

AM EST, and will not only have Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 1 lander on board, but also the Resilience lander from the Japanese robotic spacecraft firm iSpace. It will take 45 days for the craft to journey to the Moon before it spends another 14 days carrying out surface operations.

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.