The Odysseus module from Intuitive Machines landed on the Moon on Thursday (Feb. 22), after a historic descent, becoming the first spacecraft built in the United States to land on the Moon in over 50 years and the first ever built by a private company.
After delaying the final descent to activate an experimental navigation sensor from NASA, the Odysseus landed at 6:23 PM (Eastern Time) near a crater known as Malapert A, about 186 miles from the Moon’s south pole.
However, the condition of the spacecraft was not immediately known. Engineers at Intuitive Machines’ control center in Houston expected it would take about two minutes to re-establish communications after the landing, but the expected signal was not found immediately.
Finally, a weak signal was picked up by a communications antenna in the UK, indicating that the spacecraft had indeed survived the landing.
“Today, for the first time in over half a century, the US has returned to the Moon,” said the. “Today, for the first time in human history, a commercial company, an American company, launched and led the journey there. And today is a day that shows the power and promise of NASA’s commercial partnerships.”
He concluded with: “What a triumph!… This achievement is a giant leap for all humanity,” said Bill Nelson, head of NASA. “Today, for the first time in human history, a commercial company, an American company, launched and led the journey there. And today is a day that shows the power and promise of NASA’s commercial partnerships.”
He concluded with: “What a triumph!… This achievement is a giant leap for all humanity.”
A successful lunar landing marks the first landing of a spacecraft built in the US since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 and the first of a privately built spacecraft.
Intuitive Machines is one of several small companies that NASA has contracted to transport instruments that will conduct reconnaissance on the Moon’s surface before NASA astronauts return there, planned for the end of this decade.
For this mission, NASA paid Intuitive Machines $118 million under a program known as Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, to deliver six instruments to the Moon, including a stereo camera aimed at capturing the dust cloud kicked up by Odysseus as it approached the surface and a radio receiver to measure the effects of charged particles on radio signals.
There were also payloads from other customers, such as a camera built by students from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, and an art project by Jeff Koons. Parts of the spacecraft were wrapped in reflective material made by Columbia Sportswear.
Reaching the Moon has already proven to be a difficult task. Besides the United States, only the government space programs of the Soviet Union, China, India, and Japan have managed to land robotic probes on the Moon’s surface. Two companies – Japan’s Ispace and Pittsburgh’s Astrobotic Technology – had already attempted and failed, as well as a non-profit organization from Israel, SpaceIL.
Source: CBS News