Crash or soft landing? Texas-based Intuitive Machines will attempt Thursday to achieve the first lunar landing by an American probe in more than 50 years, becoming the first private company to accomplish the maneuver.
The scheduled lunar landing time was brought forward to 3:24 p.m. Houston time, where the company's control room is located.
In the night from Wednesday to Thursday, a maneuver was carried out to correct the altitude of the probe in relation to the lunar surface, explained Intuitive Machines.
The Nova-C lander, which carries NASA's scientific instruments, is just over four meters tall. It launched from Florida last week and reached lunar orbit on Wednesday.
Open in full screen mode
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Kennedy Space Center's LC-39A launch pad with Intuitive Machines' Nova-C lunar lander in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on February 15, 2024.
Photo: AFP / GREGG NEWTON
The fully automatic descent begins approximately one hour before landing. The event can be watched live on the company and NASA websites.
Using cameras and lasers, the device can control itself in real time. The final vertical descent begins at a height of 30 meters.
At that moment, a small machine with cameras developed by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University is launched from the lander to film outside the big moment.
Using its engine, Nova-C must reduce its speed from 1800 meters per second to 1 meter per second as soon as its six feet touch the ground.
A big step for the private space sector
A success would not only be a big step for private space travel, but also the first landing of an American probe on the moon since the end of the legendary Apollo program in 1972.
India and Japan were recently able to land there thanks to their national space agencies, becoming the fourth and fifth countries to do so after the Soviet Union, the United States and China.
But several companies – Israeli, Japanese and American – have so far failed to achieve the same feat.
Russia also missed a moon landing this summer.
The location targeted by Intuitive Machines is about 300 kilometers from the moon's south pole. The crater that will serve as a runway is named Malapert A, named after a 17th-century astronomer.
The lunar south pole is of interest because there is water there in the form of ice that could be used.
Open in full screen mode
Astronauts from NASA's Artemis II mission at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. (archive photo)
Photo: Portal / JOE SKIPPER
In preparation for the Artemis mission
NASA wants to send its astronauts there with its Artemis missions from 2026.
She would like to study this region more intensively, particularly in preparation for these missions.
To do this, it uses its brand new program called CLPS (for Commercial Lunar Payload Services). Instead of developing ships for the moon itself, the American space agency commissioned private companies to bring their scientific equipment there.
Intuitive Machines is one of the selected companies and the contract value with NASA for this first mission, called IM-1, is $118 million.
The aim is to reduce costs for the authority, to be able to carry out the trip more frequently, but also to further develop the lunar economy. And this despite the risks of failure.
A first mission of the program led by the American company Astrobotic failed to reach the moon last month.
The lunar lander Intuitive Machines, whose device used for this mission was named Odysseus, is also carrying six private cargoes. Among them: sculptures by contemporary artist Jeff Koons depicting the phases of the moon.
NASA's six scientific instruments on board focus on initial observations of this little-explored region.
Cameras placed beneath the moon will analyze the amount of dust projected during the descent.
Another instrument will study lunar plasma (a layer of gas charged with electricity) and measure radio waves emanating from the Sun and other planets.
Odysseus, powered by its solar panels, must operate for about seven days from the moment it lands before night falls at the moon's south pole.