A private lunar lander is gearing up for its date with destiny. Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost has been in space for 44 days, and on Sunday it will attempt to finally execute a soft landing on the Moon.
Firefly will be livestreaming the landing attempt on its YouTube page. The livestream will start at 2:20 a.m. ET on Sunday, March 2, about 75 minutes before Blue Ghost is scheduled to touch down at 3:34 a.m. ET. You can also watch the landing at the livefeed below.
Resilience took a leisurely pace to the Moon, orbiting Earth for 25 days, before entering a 16-day long lunar orbit. That will come to an end with an hour-long descent to a region of the Moon known as Mare Crisium, a basin formed by an asteroid collision.
The descent will be aided by on-board vision-based tools, designed to keep Blue Ghost from avoiding craters, rocks, slopes, and other hazards. Once a suitable landing spot is identified, Blue Ghost will use its engines to slow down, until it’s directly over the site. Landing thrusters will fire to control its descent, slowing it to a steady 3 feet (1 meter) per second in the final 11 seconds.
Should everything go smoothly, it will then begin its scheduled 16 days of surface operations. That will entail putting the 10 scientific instruments onboard to use.
There will be much to do, as Firefly has touted the mission as a key part in humanity’s return to the Moon. The lander will study heat flow from the Moon’s center, as well as its inner structure, and provide data on how solar winds and Earth’s magnetic field affect the lunar surface. The mission also features tests of several pieces of technology that could be integral to NASA’s Artemis program.
As it comes to the end of its mission, Blue Ghost’s cameras are expected to capture some spectacular cosmic phenomena. On March 14, the Earth will completely block out the Sun, resulting in a total eclipse. Two days later, it will experience a lunar sunset, which is far rarer than on Earth. A full day-night cycle on the Moon lasts about 29.5 Earth days. Sunsets up there also have some weird effects. Dust in the lunar atmosphere, combined with electrically charged particles, results in what’s known as a lunar horizon glow.
Blue Ghost has already made history, as it is one of a record three landers heading to the Moon at the same time. The same SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that carried Blue Ghost also had another lander on board: Japanese company ispace’s Resilience. That probe took an even slower route, opting for a lengthy orbit around Earth that helped it preserve fuel. On February 15, Resilience completed a flyby of the Moon, but the landing won’t happen until April.
Intuitive Machine’s Athena is the third lunar-bound craft. It launched on February 26 alongside NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer satellite, which has already run into some trouble. Athena is taking the most direct route, and is scheduled to attempt its landing on March 6.
This stuff might not have the human drama of Apollo 11, but the fact remains that these landers are being blasted into space and sent careening hundreds of thousands of miles at ludicrous speeds, only to try to gently set down on a barren and ancient rock, all in the name of science. Humans can still do some rad shit when we put our minds to it.