Firefly’s Blue Ghost Spacecraft Will Try to Land on the Moon: How to Watch
The New York Times
The lunar lander is the first of three robotic spacecraft aiming to set down on the moon this year.
The moon will be a busy place this year. There are three robotic spacecraft in space right now that are aiming to set down on the moon’s surface.
The first of those to arrive — the Blue Ghost lunar lander, built by Firefly Aerospace of Cedar Park, Texas — will attempt to land early Sunday.
The landing is scheduled for 3:45 a.m. Eastern time on March 2. Firefly will begin live coverage of the landing at 2:30 a.m. from its YouTube channel. Or you can watch it in the video player embedded above.
Just over an hour before landing, an engine burn sent the spacecraft on a downward trajectory. Shortly before 3 a.m., Firefly said that the descent toward the moon was underway.
Eleven minutes before landing, Blue Ghost will fire its engines to slow its orbital velocity from 3,800 miles per hour to about 90 miles per hour, pivot to a vertical orientation and position itself over the targeted landing, taking care to avoid boulders and other hazards. In the last 100 seconds, the vehicle’s main engine will shut off, and smaller thrusters will ignite to control descent at about 2 miles per hour until it touches down on the surface.
This mission is headed to Mare Crisium, a flat plain formed from lava that filled and hardened inside a 345-mile-wide crater carved out by an ancient asteroid impact. Mare Crisium is in the northeast quadrant of the near side of the moon.
