Frank Sinatra once crooned, "Fly me to the moon. Let me play among the stars," and for two companies, including one here in Texas, SpaceX granted that wish.

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.

An annual memorial was held at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. Every fourth Thursday in January, NASA remembers fallen astronauts.

A SpaceX mission set to lift off overnight marks a first for Firefly Aerospace under NASA’s plans to build up American companies to support its lunar goals. A Falcon 9 targeting a 1:11 a.m, liftoff Wednesday from KSC’s Launch Pad 39-A is carrying the Cedar Park,

The Blue Ghost Lunar Lander soared out of the Florida coastline and into space, shining as bright as a Central Texas firefly in the summertime. "It's an incredible privilege, and it's hard to fully understand the extent of that impact," said Kevin Scholtes, the future systems architect at Firefly Aerospace.

In the spirit of those words in Tech's "Matador Song," one of Texas Tech's professors is bearing the institution's banners into space through a NASA project aimed at understanding how heat flows on the Moon, with an eye on potential habitation.

Following launch vehicle separation, Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander acquired signal and completed on-orbit commissioning CEDAR PARK, Texas, Jan. 15, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Firefly Aerospace, the leader in end-to-end responsive space services,

Firefly Aerospace hopes to share beautiful images from the Moon with the world if it can successfully stick its first landing attempt on the lunar surface, all while bringing a slew of NASA payloads to the Moon.

But at 12:11 a.m. CST, they launched together on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Central Texas-based Firefly Aerospace is launching its first moon mission ...

The $93.3 million mission comes as NASA plans to send humans back to the moon within this decade for the first time since the space ... operations center in Cedar Park, Texas.

Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex is set to transform for an exclusive after-hours event, “Kennedy Under the Stars.”

NASA launched Blue Ghost with a motive to study the moons atmosphere. It is expected to orbit the Earth and moon for 45 days. The Blue Ghost has already started sending data.