A small American company’s robotic spacecraft has returned America to the surface of the moon for the first time in more than a century and a half.
Intuitive Machines, a Houston-based space company, landed on Thursday, becoming the first commercial company to reach the moon. The extraordinary achievement is a win for NASA, which has invested $2.6 billion in contracts with Intuitive Machines and several other vendors to deliver equipment to the moon over the next four years.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing. Hours before landing, flight controllers discovered the spacecraft’s laser range finders, which help it avoid hazards on Earth, were not working. The team decided to take another lap around the moon, which bought the engineers a few more hours to fix the problem. During this orbit, they uploaded a software patch to use NASA’s lasers on board, which had not been tested in space before.
Afterwards, there were some communication challenges, but NASA was quick to declare the landing a success, even before a single image was returned to Earth.
“Today, for the first time in human history, a commercial company — an American company — launched and led a journey up there,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a pre-recorded message during the broadcast. “Today is a day that demonstrates the strength and promise of NASA’s commercial partnerships.”
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A lander on the moon called Odysseus touched down Malapert A pit.About 200 miles from the lunar south pole, just before 6:30 PM ET. Many nations and private entities have set their sights on the region because of its ice, which is believed to be buried in polar craters. The natural resource is coveted because it could provide drinking water, air and rocket fuel for future missions, ushering in a new era in spaceflight.
Legitimizes success. Commercial Lunar Payload Services Initiative (CLPS)A private sector recruitment program to support NASA’s lunar ambitions. Through several agreements, the US space agency wants to establish a regular lunar mission itinerary in preparation for sending Artemis astronauts to the moon in 2026 or later.
Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s former science chief, once described each of the first CLPS efforts as “taking a shot at the target.” The sports analogy means that not every effort will be successful, but overall the program will give NASA more opportunities to achieve its Moon-to-Mars goals. By outsourcing NASA’s lunar missions — rather than outright ownership of each mission — the agency believes it will save money. The contract with Intuitive Machines for this mission was $118 million.
Odysseus, the Intuitive Machines spacecraft, passes by the Moon on February 21, 2024.
Credit: Intuitive Machines
“We don’t know how successful the initial efforts will be,” Joel Kearns, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for science, said during a news conference in November. “But I can tell you that these American companies are technologically strong and tough, savvy, they’re resourceful, and they’re determined to succeed. They’re the first to create this new lunar economy. The movers want to take advantage.”
But observers have questioned how cost-effective the move would really be given the risk of flying on inexperienced spacecraft. In January, Astrobotic Technologies, the first of the CLPS vendors, attempted to go to the moon, but never reached lunar orbit due to a damaging fuel leak. NASA spent $108 million on the mission and lost five payloads in the process.
“If we’re flying missions at one-tenth the cost of a NASA mission, and we fail two of them, we still get eight missions for the same cost,” Cairns said during a pre-recorded landing broadcast. said in the statement. “Even with one or two or three failures, it’s still a very economical proposition.”
Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus moon lander photographed Belkovich Crater, a 30-mile-wide crater with mountains in the center, from the moon’s orbit.
Credit: Intuitive Machines
The probability of success, especially for new space programs, is still very low. Historically, less than half of all lunar landing missions have arrived without crashing. The lunar exosphere — an extremely thin atmosphere of gases that is barely captured by the Moon’s gravity — provides virtually no drag to slow the spacecraft as it approaches Earth. Additionally, there is no GPS system on the Moon to help guide a craft to its landing site. Engineers have to compensate for these deficiencies from 239,000 miles away.
In the last five years, the private sector has tried and failed. An Israeli nonprofit and company collaborated on the so-called Beresheet moon mission in 2019, which crashed on the lunar surface after the orientation component malfunctioned. Last April, the Japanese startup space ran out of fuel and eventually crashed. Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander never made it that far and eventually crashed into the ground.
But the landing of intuitive machines could inspire confidence in a growing lunar economy.
“I know it was a nail-biter, but we’re on the surface, and we’re moving,” said Stephen Altimas, CEO of Intuitive Machines. “Welcome to the moon.”
Credit : mashable.com