Revisiting this part of the project, now that I understand Blender texture nodes and other data structures better. This is a simple animation meant to represent the lander's retro rocket firing and stirring up dust on the Lunar surface. This is meant to be somewhat cartoonish, to match the NPR style of the lander and Moon.

The animated texture nodes are shown for the debris spray animation, as well as a wireframe animation for the four meshes used to create this effect.