robot moon The lander, built by Houston-based aerospace company Intuitive Machines, is scheduled to lift off early Wednesday on a NASA mission that will carry out the first U.S. moon landing in more than half a century and by a privately owned vehicle. was.
The company's Nova-C lander, Odysseus, was scheduled to lift off aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket just before 8 a.m. PT from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The weather forecast said there was a 95% chance of good weather conditions.
The launch comes shortly after another private company, Astrobotic Technology's lunar lander, was launched into orbit on its debut by United Launch Alliance (ULA)'s Vulcan rocket on January 8, en route to the moon. This comes a month after the ship suffered a propulsion system leak. Flight.
The failure of Astrobotic's Peregrine lander, which was also part of the NASA mission, followed ill-fated efforts by Israeli and Japanese companies, with private companies unable to achieve a “soft landing” on the moon. It was the third time.
These accidents illustrate the risks NASA faces in relying more than ever on the commercial sector to realize its spaceflight goals.
The plan is for Intuitive Machines' Nova-C vehicle, a hexagonal cylindrical vehicle with four legs, to arrive at its destination as early as February 22 after a week-long flight, near the moon's south pole. It is scheduled to land in Crater Malapart A.
If successful, the flight, known as IM-1, would be the first controlled descent by a U.S. spacecraft to the moon's surface since the last Apollo manned moon mission in 1972, and the first by a private company.
artemis
The feat is also the first under NASA's Artemis moon program as the United States races to return astronauts to Earth's natural satellite before China can land its own manned spacecraft on Earth's natural satellite. will travel to the moon.
IM-1 would pay for the use of spacecraft built and owned by Elon Musk's SpaceX and other private companies to reduce the cost of the Artemis program, which is envisioned as a precursor to manned exploration of Mars. It's the latest test of NASA's strategy.
In contrast, during the Apollo era, NASA purchased rockets and other technology from the private sector, but owned and operated them itself.
Read: US lunar module mission fails in space
NASA announced last month that it was pushing back the target date for the first manned Artemis moon landing from 2025 to the end of 2026, while China said it was aiming for 2030.
A small lander like Nova-C is expected to arrive there first, carrying equipment to collect data about the lunar environment. Odysseus will focus on lunar surface and space weather interactions, radio astronomy, precision landing techniques and navigation.
Intuitive Machine's IM-2 mission is scheduled to land on the moon's south pole in 2024, followed by the IM-3 mission with multiple small probes later that year.
Last month, Japan became the fifth country to land a lunar lander, and the country's space agency Jaxa achieved an unusually precise “pinpoint” touchdown of its Slim probe last month. Last year, India became the fourth country to successfully land on the moon, after Russia failed to do so in the same month.
The only other countries to successfully perform a soft touchdown on the moon are the United States, the former Soviet Union, and China. In 2019, China achieved the first landing on the far side of the moon, setting a world record. — Joe Skipper and Steve Gorman, (c) 2024 Reuters