Houston-based space company Intuitive Machines is preparing for a real trip to the moon later this month, when it will attempt to land a spacecraft called Odysseus on the lunar surface, ideally without breaking it up in the process. The mission follows Astrobotic's failed attempt in January; That company's lander, Peregrine, never reached the Moon because of a propellant leak that shortened its trip. Peregrine's failure means IM-1 from intuitive machines The mission could be the first commercial moon landing if it arrives intact.
Intuitive Machines hopes to make its landing attempt on February 22, targeting the Malapert A crater near the moon's south pole for landing. This arrival date depends on Odysseus, one of the company's Nova-C-class landers, leaving Earth atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sometime between February 14 and 16. The launch window opens at 12:57 a.m. ET on Wednesday.
Odysseus is the first of three Nova-C landing plans for intuitive machines to send to the moon this year, all of which will have commercial payloads on board and NASA instruments contracted under the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. At 14 feet tall (4.3 meters), the lander is about the size of a giraffe and can carry about 280 pounds (130 kg) of cargo. Its mission, if it achieves a soft landing, will be short but potentially valuable in informing future excursions to the region, including NASA's upcoming crewed Artemis missions. Orbiting probes have found evidence of water ice at the lunar south pole, which could be used for astronaut subsistence and even fuel, making it an area of great interest for human exploration.
The solar-powered craft and any functional equipment it carries are expected to be operational only for about a week before the onset of lunar night, a 14-day period of frigid darkness that the company says will leave the module inoperable landing. But as long as everything is up and running, the various instruments will collect data on the surface. NASA awarded Intuitive Machines a $77 million contract to deliver its payloads in 2019, and there are now six NASA instruments traveling on Odysseus.
One, the Laser Retroreflector Array (LRA), “will function as a permanent location marker” from its position on the moon after landing to help incoming spacecraft determine their distance from the surface, according to NASA. The lander also carries the Navigation Doppler LIDAR for Accurate Speed and Range Detection (NDL), a sensor that measures speed and altitude to better guide descent, and the Lunar Node 1 (LN-1) navigation demonstrator. ) to support communication and autonomous navigation. in future missions.
NASA is also sending instruments to study smoke plumes on the surface (anything that rises when the lander lands) along with radio waves and the effects of space weather. This includes the Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume Surface Surveys (SCALPSS), which will capture images of these dust plumes, and the Radio Wave Observation Instrument on the Lunar Surface Photoelectronic Instrument (ROLSES).
The rest of the payloads aboard the Odysseus are commercial. Columbia Sportswear worked with Intuitive Machines to incorporate the brand's Apollo-inspired Omni-Heat Infinity thermal reflective material, which is being used for this mission to help protect the cryogenic propulsion tank, according to Intuitive Machines. Students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University developed a camera system called EagleCam that will attempt to separate from the lander before it lands and take a photograph of the moment from a third-person point of view. EagleCam is also equipped with an experimental dust removal system.
There are even some Jeff Koons sculptures headed to the moon, which will have physical and nft counterparts on Earth. In Koons' Moon Phase piece, 125 small stainless steel sculptures of the moon in different phases are enclosed in a transparent cube made by 4Space, with the names of important historical figures from around the world listed below each sphere. The Hawaii-based International Lunar Observatory Association and Canadensys Aerospace are sending up a 1.3-pound dual-camera system called ILO-X, which will attempt to capture wide- and narrow-field images of the Milky Way from the Moon .
Odysseus also carries small disks called “Lunagrams” from Galactic Legacy Labs that contain messages from Earth, including text, images, audio, and files from major databases such as the Arch Mission Foundation and the English version of Wikipedia. Similar footage was sent into space with Peregrine last month. Information technology company Lonestar plans to demonstrate its disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) by storing data on the lander and transmitting documents (including the United States Declaration of Independence) between Earth and the Moon. This will be followed by a mini data center prototype in the next release from Intuitive Machines.
Now, the pressure is on for the Odysseus Nova-C lander to reach the lunar surface safely. This year started off rough for lunar missions, with the failure of Astrobotic's Peregrine and a descent problem that caused JAXA's SLIM spacecraft to crash onto the lunar surface (although the latter was miraculously able to resume functions to some extent after few days). Intuitive Machines will have other chances to get it right if it doesn't get it right this time (it already has several missions booked), but only a private lander can be the “first.”
