What does a total lunar eclipse look like from the moon? A NASA-supported spaceship could be about to find out if it’s successful in landing on the moon in March 2025.
While there, the “Blue Ghost” lander—which will launch this coming week from Florida—will also investigate a mysterious glow seen on the moon by Apollo astronauts but never fully explained.
Blue Ghost: Total Eclipse of The Sun (By The Earth)
During a lunar eclipse—which is next due on March 13/14, 2025—the Earth is precisely between the sun and a full moon. The Earth projects its shadow onto the lunar surface, and the only sunlight that gets to the lunar surface is filtered by Earth’s atmosphere, so it looks reddish like a sunset. From the moon, a total lunar eclipse should look like a total eclipse of the sun by the Earth.
From the moon’s night side, facing Earth during a full moon, a 360-degree camera on Blue Ghost on the lunar surface will be used to image a halo of light around the Earth.
“On Earth, we’d be looking at a lunar eclipse where the moon gets shadowed out, and on the moon, we’ll see a solar eclipse where the Earth blocks the sun,” said a spokesperson at Firefly Aerospace, in an email. “That’s what we aim to capture with Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander.”
Blue Ghost: Launch And Mission Timeline
This moon lander is not from NASA but from a commercial U.S. company called Firefly Aerospace. Its “Ghostrider In The Sky” mission will see the Blue Ghost lunar lander take off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 11:11 a.m. EST on Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025, orbit Earth for 25 days, then journey for around 45 days to lunar orbit before attempting a landing during March. It will land near Mons Latreille within Mare Crisium in the northeast of the near-side of the moon.
Blue Ghost: Lunar Sunset
“We’ll wrap up the mission by capturing a solar eclipse [by the Earth] and a lunar sunset in high-definition video before operating several hours into the lunar night,” said Jason Kim, CEO of Firefly Aerospace, during a NASA teleconference on Dec. 17, 2025.
This will be Firefly Aerospace’s first mission to the moon, though it will only be able to perform science for one lunar day — equivalent to 14 Earth days. It is designed to have a big enough battery to enable it to image sunset from the moon before beginning a dark, cold fortnight.
Blue Ghost’s ‘Lunar Glow’ Plans
Blue Ghost plans to catch a second lunar phenomenon on video — lunar horizon glow. “We expect to capture a phenomenon seen and documented by Eugene Cernan during his final steps on Apollo 17 where he observed a horizon glow as the lunar dust levitated on the surface,” said Kim. Apollo 17 in 1972 was the final crewed mission to the moon. The mission’s Commander, Eugene Cernan — the last man on the moon — observed a strange crescent-shaped glow on the moon’s horizon. It’s thought to be caused by dust in the moon’s thin atmosphere only becoming visible during sunset, though exactly why is unknown. “Knowing that Firefly’s Blue Ghost mission is a culmination of what the last Apollo astronaut to walk on the moon observed is a fitting tribute to their legacy,” said Kim.
Blue Ghost: NASA’s Involvement
There’s plenty of other NASA science flying on the Blue Ghost Mission 1. Part of the agency’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis campaign, projects include lunar GPS, studying samples of moon dust and testing radiation-proof computers.
Earlier this month, NASA announced that its forthcoming crewed mission to the moon — the first since Apollo 17 — was being rescheduled for April 2026. This Artemis II mission is part of NASA’s attempt to return humans to the moon. Artemis II will carry four astronauts on a lunar flyby without landing. The subsequent Artemis III mission, intended to achieve a crewed lunar landing, was postponed to mid-2027.
