Blue Ghost lander captures stunning sunset shots on the moon before falling silent

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A private lunar lander has captured the first high-definition sunset pictures from the moon.

Firefly Aerospace and NASA released the stunning photos Tuesday, taken before the Blue Ghost lander fell silent over the weekend. One shot included Venus in the distance.

Firefly’s Blue Ghost landed on the moon on March 2, the first private spacecraft to touch down upright and perform its entire mission. It kept taking pictures and collecting science data five hours into the lunar night before it died for lack of solar energy.

NASA’s Joel Kearns said Blue Ghost’s series of sunset shots are the first high-resolution images from Earth’s neighbor. Scientists will need to analyze them in depth, he noted, before making any determination about the horizon glow captured in at least one of the photos and whether it was created by levitating dust. That theory was put forth more than a half-century ago by Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan, the last astronaut to walk on the moon.

“What we’ve got is a really beautiful, aesthetic image showing some really unusual features,” Kearns said at a news conference.

Blue Ghost carried 10 experiments for NASA under the space agency’s commercial lunar delivery program. While all objectives were met, officials said, the on-board drill could only penetrate 3 feet (1 meter) into the moon versus the 10 feet (3 meters) that had been planned.

Firefly said it will try to activate the lunar in early April following the two-week, bitter cold lunar night, although engineers are doubtful it will crank back up.

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Marcia Dunn, The Associated Press