A flight company based in Texas Moon But it has become the first company in history to launch a privately owned spacecraft.
The Nova C Odysseus lander, built by Texas-based space company Intuitive Machines, landed on the moon’s south pole on Thursday. Its goal was to land on a crater called Malapert A, 186 miles from the moon’s south pole.
Odysseus is also the first American landing on the moon since the last mission of the Apollo program, Apollo 17, fifty years ago.
The moment of ‘biting’ was confirmed by the Intuitive Machines control room just before 6.40pm ET, prompting cheers and celebrations. About an hour before landing, the spacecraft experienced problems with laser equipment designed to help it assess the lunar terrain and find a safe and hazard-free place to touch down.
Moon car The laser range finders aboard Odysseus were inoperable, but the sensors were reattached to one of NASA’s science instruments aboard the lander to resolve the problem.
‘I know it was a nail-biting moment, but we’re on the surface, and we’re in touch,’ Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altimes announced on the live webcast. ‘Welcome to the moon.’
‘Odysseus has found a new home.’
According to NASA, the spacecraft’s official landing time was 6:23 p.m. ET, one minute ahead of Earth time.
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‘Your order was delivered to the moon!’ The organization wrote on X. ‘These instruments will prepare us for future human exploration of the Moon under #Artemis.’
The spacecraft took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida last week on a Falcon 9 rocket built by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX and performed several maneuvers during its 620,000-mile journey.
Odysseus is a hexagonal cylinder 13ft (4m) long and 5ft (1.57m) wide and weighs 1,488lb (675kg), about the size of a British phone box.
It is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, which aims to involve commercial companies in lunar exploration and could pave the way for astronauts to land on the moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program.
In addition to NASA’s tech and navigation experiments, Intuitive Machines sold space on the lander to Columbia Sportswear to deliver its innovative insulating jacket fabric, 125 miniature moon sculptures by sculptor Jeff Koons, and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical. The university was assigned a set of cameras to take pictures of the landing lander.
The pole is believed to contain water ice, which will be a valuable resource for future human exploration. Now that it is safely on the surface, Odysseus will operate until about a week before the moon sets over the South Pole.
The historic event comes a month after another US spacecraft, Peregrine, failed to come down after a fuel leak. Prior to the Intuitive Missions mission, controlled lunar landings have only been performed by government agencies, including the United States, the Soviet Union, China, India, and Japan.
In a previous video describing the spacecraft’s flight path, Intuitive Missions Chief Technology Officer Tim Crane described how the spacecraft prepared for its landing on the lunar surface.
Odysseus needed to complete the orbit on the far side of the Moon, where the Moon itself prevents direct communication with mission controllers on Earth.
“Once we orbit the moon, we have the sun warming us on the day side of the moon and the bright moonlight warming us on the other side,” Mr Crane said. Then we plunged into the night and now we are cold on both sides. It’s very difficult.’
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2024-08-03 21:37:02
