Mare Crisium: Blue Ghost landing site
Mare Crisium: Blue Ghost landing site
Mare Crisium is an impact basin approximately 500 km in diameter it formed about four billion years ago when an asteroid roughly 40 km in size struck the northeastern part of the Moon's near side. Following the impact, magma from the Moon's mantle emerged through cracks, flooding the basin with low-viscosity lava and forming the smooth plains seen today. For a long time, astronomers mistook these strikingly smooth plains for seas, hence the Latin term 'Mare'. Blue Ghost is not the first artificial object to reach this region. In 1969, at the same time as the first human lunar landing, the Soviet probe Luna 15 crash-landed in Mare Crisium. Its successor, Luna 23, successfully landed on 6 November 1974, followed by Luna 24 on 18 August 1976, which returned 170 grams of lunar material to Earth.
