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

Firefly Aerospace, the leader in end-to-end responsive space services, today announced Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, successfully acquired signal, and completed on-orbit commissioning.

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

Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Mission 1, part of NASA’s Artemis campaign, is set to launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, targeting the Moon to carry out crucial science experiments. These experiments will test technologies from lunar drilling to radiation-resistant computing,

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.

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,

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.