How to Watch Firefly’s Blue Ghost Attempt Its Historic Moon Landing

A private lunar lander is set for a significant moment in space exploration. Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost has been in space for a total of 44 days and is gearing up to execute a soft landing on the Moon this Sunday.

Firefly will be broadcasting the landing attempt live on its YouTube page. The livestream is scheduled to begin at 2:20 a.m. ET on Sunday, March 2, which is about 75 minutes before Blue Ghost is expected to land at 3:34 a.m. ET. You can also tune in to the livestream below.

The journey to the Moon has been a leisurely one for Blue Ghost, as it orbited Earth for 25 days before entering a 16-day lunar orbit. This orbit will culminate in a one-hour descent to a region of the Moon known as Mare Crisium, a large basin created by an asteroid impact.

During its descent, Blue Ghost will utilize on-board vision-based tools designed to help it avoid craters, rocks, slopes, and other potential hazards. Once it identifies a safe landing area, Blue Ghost will slow its descent using its engines. In the last 11 seconds before landing, thrusters will fire to regulate its speed, slowing it down to a steady pace of about 3 feet (1 meter) per second.

If all goes according to plan, Blue Ghost will commence a scheduled 16 days of operations on the lunar surface, utilizing the 10 scientific instruments it carries.

This mission is being emphasized by Firefly as a vital step in humanity's return to the Moon. The lander will conduct research on heat flow from the Moon's core, delve into its internal structure, and gather information on the effects of solar winds and Earth’s magnetic field on the lunar surface. Additionally, it will test several technologies that are expected to play crucial roles in NASA's Artemis program.

As Blue Ghost completes its mission, it is expected to capture stunning images of cosmic events. On March 14, a total solar eclipse will occur, where the Earth will completely obscure the Sun. Just two days later, Blue Ghost will witness a lunar sunset, an event that is considerably rarer than sunsets on Earth. A full day-night cycle on the Moon lasts around 29.5 Earth days, leading to unique sunset phenomena, such as a lunar horizon glow caused by dust and electrically charged particles in the lunar atmosphere.

Blue Ghost is already making history as one of three landers headed to the Moon concurrently. It was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which also carried another lander from the Japanese company ispace, named Resilience. This lander is taking a more extended route, orbiting Earth to conserve fuel, and is set to perform a flyby of the Moon on February 15, with its landing scheduled for April.

The third lunar-bound craft, Athena, launched on February 26 alongside NASA's Lunar Trailblazer satellite. Athena is taking a more direct route and is planning to land on March 6. While the drama of human spaceflight like Apollo 11 may be absent, these landers represent an incredible feat of engineering, traveling hundreds of thousands of miles at astonishing speeds to softly touch down on the old, barren lunar landscape—all in the name of scientific research.

lunar, landing, exploration