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A small uncrewed spacecraft is buzzing the moon, with under two weeks remaining before its bold attempt to land on the lunar surface.
Firefly Aerospace, a private company hired by NASA to deliver science experiments to the moon, just achieved another milestone on its mission. On Tuesday, its Blue Ghost lander, named after an exotic type of firefly, relit its engine in space to lower its egg-shaped lunar orbit. The burn, which lasted three minutes and 18 seconds, brought the lander within 75 miles of the ground.
But the real treat was the footage beamed back to mission control of the moon’s mysterious far side, only seen firsthand by 24 people, all Apollo astronauts in the 1960s and 1970s. The video, posted farther down in this story, captures heavily cratered terrain, speeding away as the spacecraft flies above.
Credit: Firefly Aerospace
The far side is the hemisphere of the moon facing away from Earth. Because people never see it from our perch on Earth, that portion was once dubbed “the dark side.” The confusing misnomer has led many to incorrectly assume the far side is shrouded in darkness. In reality, it receives just as much light as the near side.
It takes about a month for the moon, some 250,000 miles away, to orbit Earth. It also takes the same amount of time for the moon to make one full rotation on its axis. This coincidence is why Earthlings always see the same lunar side.
Prior to space exploration, many speculated the far side was an ominous region, a myth perpetuated by Pink Floyd’s trippy “Dark Side of the Moon” album in 1973.
Indeed the far side remained an enigma to humans, but only until October 1959. That’s when the Soviet space program swung the Luna 3 probe around the moon. The spacecraft returned several grainy images that revealed a curiously different surface than that on the familiar near side, with vastly less splotches called maria, dark areas formed when meteoroids slammed into the moon and caused lava to emerge. The far side, on the other hand, is blanketed in more craters of various sizes and depths.
China became the first — and, so far, only — nation to land an uncrewed spacecraft on the far side during its Chang’e-4 mission in 2019. The moon itself blocks communication between mission controllers on Earth and the far side. But in 2018, China put a communication relay satellite in space about 40,000 miles beyond the moon that could exchange the signals.
Firefly’s lander, originally scheduled to lift off in late 2024, is the first NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services mission of the year. The program has invested $2.6 billion in contracts with vendors from the private sector to help deliver instruments to the moon and send back crucial data.
Blue Ghost is carrying 10 instruments for NASA, which has paid Firefly $101.5 million for the ride. The space agency wants to see a regular cadence of moon missions to prepare for astronaut-led Artemis expeditions in 2027 or later.
Mission control is targeting the Blue Ghost landing for 3:45 a.m. ET on Sunday, March 2. If all goes as planned, the spacecraft will find its struts on Mare Crisium, a plain made from an ancient hardened lava flow. This volcanic feature is not on the far side, but the northeast quadrant on the near side of the moon. The landing site is expected to provide insights into the lunar environment and test technologies for supporting future landings carrying astronauts.
Credit: Firefly Aerospace graphic
Though there won’t be any video of the spacecraft’s actual descent to the surface, NASA and Firefly intend to broadcast commentary for the event, starting at 2:30 a.m. ET that morning.
“Our available bandwidth will be dedicated to critical descent operations during landing, so (we) will not be streaming live video during descent,” Firefly officials said on X, formerly called Twitter.
Anyone who has tried it can vouch that landing on the moon is onerous. The moon’s exosphere provides virtually no drag to slow a spacecraft down as it approaches the ground. Furthermore, there are no GPS systems on the moon to help guide a craft to its landing spot. Then there’s the fact that everything is about six times tippier on the moon.
A handful of space agencies around the world have stuck a landing, but so far just one company, Intuitive Machines, has made the robotic journey all the way through lunar touchdown. Its craft landed sideways near the moon’s south pole in February 2024, still managing to operate from its awkward position.
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Firefly Aerospace, hired by NASA to land science experiments on the moon, has reached lunar orbit with astonishing “receipts” to prove it.
