Guidance computer audio

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Your foothold starts in orbit.

Undock, establish clearance, and execute the short retrograde burn. Coast with engines off, then brake toward the selected patch. Guidance handles the planned burns; you can take over during powered descent.

Shadow-edge mission: compare the tight primary footprint with the broader alternate. Establish precision-navigation lock and scan terrain below 5 km altitude and within 8 km of the target. Decide on a diversion before dropping below 1 km.

Visibility: visible and low-light cameras need reflected light. Landing lights help nearby. Thermal is an illustrative contrast mode, not measured thermal imagery. Synthetic view shows reconstructed map geometry; the hazard panel separately identifies scan coverage.

Use time acceleration for the coast, or jump to the approach checkpoint. Abort ends the attempt; orbital recovery is not modeled.

Orbit is sideways free fall.

You begin 100 km above the Moon at circular orbital velocity. To descend, you must shed that velocity with thrust.

First flight: undock from the carrier, establish clearance, then execute the insertion burn. Guidance rotates the spacecraft and fires the main engine through the same physics as manual flight. Use 20× time for the long approach. Guidance lands automatically unless you take control.

Manual: W/S pitch, A/D roll, Q/E yaw fire attitude jets. They rotate the craft; they do not move it sideways. Thrust acts along the spacecraft’s vertical axis. Tilt, apply thrust, then counter-tilt to brake. +/− adjust commanded throttle (Shift also increases it), Space commands full thrust, X cuts it. The main engine spools toward the command. I/K, J/L, and U/O fire forward/aft, left/right, and up/down translation jets in spacecraft axes; releasing them stops thrust, not velocity. Fine RCS reduces manual jet force to 20%. Attitude jets apply torque with mass-dependent inertia; rate damping uses counter-thrust and consumes propellant. R toggles angular-rate damping; it never cancels translational velocity. P pauses. Drag or use arrow keys to look around; C recenters. Tab moves between controls; Space/Enter activates a focused button. Focus the flight window for Space to command full thrust.

Trajectory HUD: the cyan curve predicts your engine-off ground track under lunar gravity for up to 30 minutes, stopping at terrain contact. The amber dashed line points directly to your selected target; it is not a flyable trajectory. Flight-director keys align your main thrust axis with the landing controller’s suggested acceleration. Throttle advice applies after alignment. The expedition includes a separation impulse, a short descent-orbit insertion burn, an engine-off coast, and powered braking. The spacecraft and timeline are simplified; this is not an Apollo reconstruction.

Instruments: the external monitor shows the craft and surrounding terrain from a local-level chase camera; plumes indicate active jet channels. The horizon dial follows spacecraft attitude, independent of where you look. Pitch and roll are relative to the local lunar vertical. The external camera is a gameplay aid.

Landing: below 4 m/s vertical, 2 m/s horizontal, and 12° tilt. The expedition primary footprint has a 55 m radius; the training/alternate footprint has a 160 m radius. Local slope must be below 8 degrees. Fuel is finite; a new target starts a fresh orbit.

Measured terrain. Simplified spacecraft.

The Connecting Ridge missions use an original 5 m-grid NASA LOLA elevation crop for collision and slope calculations. The regional display mesh is sampled at about 20 m. Much of the source grid is interpolated; small boulders are unresolved. Global terrain uses the coarser 16-samples-per-degree map. LROC imagery supplies color. Heights are true scale. Lighting and shadow-edge mission conditions are illustrative, not a reconstruction of a dated illumination state.

Resource scores are fictional prospecting values. They are not deposit measurements or proven reserves. Gravity follows the Moon’s inverse-square field; fuel burn changes mass. The engine, guidance, cockpit, and RCS are simplified game systems.

Terrain & imagery: NASA Scientific Visualization Studio / LRO LOLA & LROC ↗ · NASA lunar water science ↗

Your keyboard is the cockpit.

Tab / Shift+Tab moves focus. Enter or Space activates a button. Arrow keys operate sliders and selects. Focus the flight window to fly. Menus pause the simulation; resume when ready.

Flight keys use physical key positions shown for a US keyboard. Browser Ctrl, Alt and Command shortcuts are preserved. All actions are also reachable with Tab.

Practice from a checkpoint.

Restore a saved phase or jump to approach. Flight remains paused until you resume.

Report a bug ↗ Opens in a new tab; your flight stays paused.

Restart expedition?