Firefly’s Blue Ghost spacecraft set to land on the Moon for NASA

Our Earth (in the background) before setting and after rising in lunar orbit as captured by Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander. Snapshots from timelapse by Firefly.

On February 18, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Moon lander part of NASA’s CLPS program successfully fired its engines for about three minutes to lower its lunar orbit. Scott Tilley’s enthusiastic tracking found this orbit to be about 150 by 100 kilometers, down from the roughly 150 by 5673 kilometers it was after lunar orbital insertion on February 13. Then on February 24, Firefly nearly circularized Blue Ghost’s orbit with a 16-second burn. Blue Ghost can now attempt descending on the Moon on March 2 to land amid the lava plains of Mare Crisium with the landing ellipse centered at 18.56°N, 61.81°E.

Firefly Blue Ghost’s landing region (white box) in the cratered lava plains of Mare Crisium. Image: NASA / LROC / GSFC / ASU

The landing site selection process for Blue Ghost involved down-selecting sites within Mare Crisium based on some of the following main criteria:

• Analyze data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and Earth’s Arecibo radar observatory to find areas with the lowest density of large craters (> 2 meters), gentle slopes of less than 5°, and no boulders at the 1–2-meter scale for a safe landing
• Take into account engineering requirements like having a direct line of sight from the lander to the Sun and Earth for power…