Credit: Boston University; NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
X-ray Observing from the Moon
Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Lander launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on January 16, 2025 as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. This is a program where NASA works with industry to deliver payloads and scientific instruments to the Moon, as part of NASA's Artemis campaign of lunar exploration. On March 2, 2025Blue Ghost successfully landed on the surface of the moon (the first lunar landing for Firefly). One of the instruments on-board Blue Ghost is LEXI, the Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager. LEXI was developed by scientists at NASA, Boston University, and Johns Hopkins University, and its main mission is to help understand how earth's magnetic shield, the magnetosphere, responds to charged particles from the solar wind by taking low-energy X-ray images of the magnetosphere. After deployment on the surface of the moon, LEXI successfully operated during the two-week long lunar day, transmitting low-energy X-ray images of the earth's magnetosphere to scientists for study of the space-weather environment near earth. The image above shows a simulated false-color LEXI low-energy X-ray image of the interaction between the solar wind and earth's magnetosphere, with the LEXI mission patch superimposed at the lower left. Observing from the surface of the moon means that, unlike other X-ray instruments, LEXI was able to view how the entire magnetosphere responds to changes in the solar wind. You can watch the landing video, and get updates of the mission status at the Firefly Aerospace site.
Published: September 7, 2026
<
HEA Dictionary ● Archive
● Search HEAPOW
● Other Languages
● HEAPOW on Facebook
● Download all Images
● Education ● HEAD
>
Each week the HEASARC
brings you new, exciting and beautiful images from X-ray and Gamma ray
astronomy. Check back each week and be sure to check out the HEAPOW archive!
Page Author: Dr. Michael F. Corcoran
Last modified Tuesday, 08-Sep-2026 13:55:18 EDT