Over a half-century after astronauts walked on the moon, landing remains a daunting endeavor.
On March 2, Texas-based Firefly Aerospace will attempt the ambitious feat, as it will direct its robotic Blue Ghost spacecraft to land in Mare Crisium, a lava-covered basin on the moon's near side. The company has shared some of the mission's final views before descending to the lunar surface, showcasing the "magnificent desolation” NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin witnessed in 1969.
In the clip below, sped up by 10x, you're seeing the crater-blanketed moon from 62 miles above, with the craft's thruster at top center.
"That feeling you get when you look out the window and realize you're almost home! T-4 days until we land [on] the Moon," Firefly Aerospace posted on X on Feb. 26.
The 6.6-foot-tall lander, funded by NASA as part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, is carrying a suite of instruments and experiments for the space agency as NASA prepares to establish a permanent presence on the moon. This includes radiation-tolerant computing tests and sampling of the lunar regolith.
But landing on the moon remains daunting, largely because it's a world with virtually no atmosphere to slow spacecraft down. A craft must plummet to the surface perfectly, as thrusters fire to slow its descent onto a surface teeming with pits and craters. Although Chinese and Indian craft have had recent landing successes, the U.S. commercial spacecraft Odysseus sustained damage while landing awkwardly in 2024. The same year, a Japanese craft landed upside down, on its head.
If all goes as planned, Blue Ghost's looming descent will take just an hour. If it lands without damage, the craft is expected to perform science operations for 14 days.
Crucially, human spaceflight is expected to follow these robotic missions. NASA currently intends to fly astronauts to the moon in mid-2027, wherein they'll spend a week exploring the dark, shadowy craters of the moon's south pole.
