It was an ideal moon touchdown.
Though no straightforward feat, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander descended in a managed trend, and with out mishap, to the lunar floor on March 2, changing into the primary industrial spacecraft to have a completely profitable touchdown on the moon. And NASA cameras affixed to the underside of the robotic craft filmed footage of the descent and dusty landing.
The NASA instrument, known as Stereo Cameras for Lunar-Plume Floor Research, or (SCALPSS), captured 3,000 frames in the course of the operation. This “first-of-its-kind” imagery will inform future touchdown missions — each crewed and robotic — about how plumes of moon mud behave as thrusters file into the lunar regolith, and the way such plumes influence close by craft or infrastructure.
Mashable Mild Pace
The view proven within the NASA video beneath begins when the squat Blue Ghost craft — 6.6 toes tall and 11.5 toes huge — is 91 toes, or 28 meters, from the lunar floor.
“As the descent continues, the interaction becomes increasingly complex, with the plumes vigorously kicking up the lunar dust, soil, and rocks — collectively known as regolith,” NASA defined. “After touchdown, the thrusters shut off and the dust settles. The lander levels a bit and the lunar terrain beneath and immediately around it becomes visible.”
The shadow of the Blue Ghost spacecraft on the lunar floor, with Earth within the distance.
Credit score: Firefly Aerospace
Whereas this touchdown went easily, touchdown on the moon nonetheless stays daunting, largely as a result of it is a world with nearly no ambiance to sluggish spacecraft down. A craft should plummet to the floor virtually completely, as thrusters hearth to sluggish its descent onto a floor teeming with pits and craters. Though Chinese language and Indian craft have had latest touchdown successes, the U.S. industrial spacecraft Odysseus sustained harm whereas touchdown awkwardly in 2024, and one other of the corporate’s landers fell to its facet in 2025. In 2024, a Japanese craft landed the wrong way up, on its head.
Blue Ghost’s mission was funded by NASA as a part of its Industrial Lunar Payload Providers program, which it hopes will set the stage for a U.S. lunar presence. Within the coming years, NASA intends to land astronauts on the moon, too. The area company at the moment expects to deliver astronauts to the moon in mid-2027, whereby they will spend every week exploring eerie craters of the moon’s resource-rich south pole.
