Landing on the Moon is tricky.⁣ ⁣ When missions fly crew and payloads to the lunar surface, spacecraft control their descent by firing rocket engines to counteract the Moon’s gravitational pull. The engines blast supersonic plumes of hot gas toward the surface and the intense forces kick up dust and eject rocks at high speeds. This can cause hazards like visual obstructions and dust clouds that can interfere with navigation and science instrumentation.⁣ ⁣ To improve its understanding of plume-surface interactions, NASA_Marshall researchers recently produced a simulation of the Apollo 12 lander engine plumes interacting with the surface and the predicted erosion that closely matched what happened during landing. This animation depicts the last half-minute of descent before engine cut-off, showing the predicted forces exerted by plumes on a flat computational surface. Here, the fluctuating radial patterns show the intensity of predicted shear stress, or the amount of sideways force app...