An uncrewed spacecraft just snapped an iconic portrait of the blue marble from space. Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander, a private spacecraft hired by NASA to take experiments to the moon, is flying laps around Earth right now as it gears up for its first attempt at a lunar touchdown.

For a brief, but exciting, time last year, Earth had two moons. A small asteroid lingered close to our planet in its orbit around the Sun, temporarily caught by Earth’s gravity to become a far away mini-moon. A closer look at the space rock reveals a rather familiar origin: Earth’s mini-moon might actually be a broken-off piece of our regular Moon.

Still circling Earth, Firefly Aerospace’s lunar lander fired its thrusters Thursday to put it on a path to reach the moon in over a month. Dubbed Blue Ghost, the spacecraft beamed back photos and video of the Blue Marble, our planet. The Texas company released the images Friday.

Last year, astronomers on the hunt for potentially dangerous near-Earth asteroids spotted something unusual. A space rock, now dubbed 2024 PT5 made several close passes by Earth, not quite orbiting our planet,

A private U.S. spacecraft bound for the moon has captured stunning images of Earth one week into its flight. Still circling Earth, Firefly Aerospace’s lunar lander fired its thrusters Thursday to put it on a path to reach the moon in over a month.