Half a century after the Apollo 17 mission, a US space probe will reach the moon this Thursday. This is the Odysseus module, which was successfully launched last week by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. If the mission is completed successfully, it would be the first lunar landing achieved by a private company, Intuitive Machines, owned by billionaire American businessman of Iranian origin Kamal Ghaffarian. NASA estimates that arrival will occur at 12:24 a.m. Spanish Peninsula Time on Friday (6:24 p.m. on the east coast of the United States and 5:24 p.m. in central Mexico). You can follow the signal live here.
The new attempt comes after an eventful few months for other competitors in the space race and after the recent fiasco of a Japanese and American mission. Odysseus transports six devices that NASA wants to place safely in the gray dust. The Intuitive Machines lander fired its engine on the far side of the moon this Wednesday while out of contact with Earth. In one of the mission's most delicate moments, controllers at the company's headquarters in Houston had to wait for the ship to surface to figure out whether the lander was in orbit or drifting.
On Thursday, controllers lowered the device's orbit from about 60 miles (92 kilometers) to 6 miles (10 kilometers), in a crucial maneuver on the opposite side of Earth's natural satellite. They then set their sights on the descent near the moon's south pole.
Odysseus tracks its position using cameras, compares crater patterns with stored maps, and measures its height using laser beams on the surface. About 1.2 kilometers from the landing site, the ship turns vertical and the sensors search for a safe landing site. During the last 15 meters of the descent, avoid using the altimeter camera and laser to avoid being fooled by the dust kicked up by the engine exhaust.
Private collaboration
NASA has begun outsourcing much of its missions to private companies and plans to continue to do so. Intuitive Machines is one of 14 suppliers selected to deliver payloads to the Moon as part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. This program is intended to enable American companies to carry scientific, research and technological loads to the surface and into lunar orbit.
The space agency's goal is therefore to gain new knowledge about the lunar environment in order to support future manned missions as part of the Artemis campaign. NASA had to postpone its plans to return people to the moon for the time being because several companies involved were experiencing technical problems. The last time American astronauts walked on the moon was in December 1972 on Apollo 17. Half a century later, the space adventure continues.
For this mission, NASA is the lead customer with half of the 12 payloads carried by Odysseus. The company paid Intuitive Machines $118 million to bring its working tools to the moon. This is a stereoscopic camera for observing the dust cloud that rises upon landing; a radio receiver for measuring the effects of charged particles on radio signals; an experiment in autonomous navigation capabilities to support future surface and orbital operations; a set of eight retroreflectors that will serve as permanent position markers on the Moon for decades; a lidar-based descent and landing sensor, an instrument that works on the same principles as radar but with a laser, and a gauge that uses radio waves to determine how much fuel remains in the tanks in a low-gravity environment.
Three previous non-governmental attempts failed. One corresponded to an American company, another to a Japanese company, and a third to a private, non-profit Israeli initiative. American Astrobotic Technology tried to send a module last month, but it didn't even reach the moon due to a loss of fuel. This module returned through the atmosphere in free fall and burned until it disintegrated over the Pacific. All equipment on board the ship from various institutions around the world was lost with the ship. The Hakuto-R probe, which attempted in April last year, stopped giving signals after the planned contact time, which was interpreted as a crash. A similar attempt by a group of Israelis failed in 2019.
You can follow THEME on Facebook, X and Instagram, or sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.