Hexagonal spacecraft lands near lunar south pole
Washington:
A Houston-based company has sent the first U.S. spacecraft to the moon in more than 50 years, part of a new fleet of unmanned commercial robots funded by NASA to prepare for astronaut missions later this decade. Pave the way.
But while flight controllers confirmed they had received a weak signal, it was unclear whether the lander Odysseus, built by Intuitive Machines, was fully functional, with the announcer on the livestream suggesting it might have become imbalanced.
The hexagonal spacecraft landed near the moon’s south pole at 2323 GMT, slowing from 4,000 miles per hour (6,500 kilometers per hour).
Images from the external “EagleCam” that were supposed to be taken during the spacecraft’s final seconds of descent are now ready for release.
However, nothing is certain yet.
“There’s no doubt that our equipment is on the lunar surface and we’re transmitting,” said Tim Crain, the company’s chief technology officer. “So congratulations to the IM team and we’ll see what we can get out of that. How much more.”
The failure of another U.S. company’s moon landing mission last month raised the stakes in proving that private industry can repeat the feat achieved by NASA during the manned Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
Joel Kearns, a senior NASA official, said the current mission “will be one of the first missions to go to the South Pole to actually look at the environmental conditions where we will send astronauts in the future.”
“What type of dust or dirt is there, how hot or cold is it, what’s the radiation environment like? These are all things you really want to know before you send out the first human explorers.”
Lunar South Pole
Odysseus was launched on February 15 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and has a new supercooled liquid oxygen and liquid methane propulsion system that allows it to travel quickly through space.
Its landing site, Marapet A, is an impact crater 300 kilometers (180 miles) from the moon’s south pole.
NASA hopes to eventually establish a long-term presence there and collect ice for drinking water and rocket fuel under its flagship Moon-to-Mars program, Artemis.
Instruments carried aboard Odysseus include a camera to study how the moon’s surface changes due to plumes from the spacecraft’s engines, and a device to analyze clouds of charged dust particles that hang on the moon’s surface at dusk due to solar radiation.
It also carries a NASA landing system that emits laser pulses and measures the time it takes for the signal to return and its frequency changes to accurately determine the spacecraft’s speed and distance from the surface to avoid a catastrophic impact.
The instrument was originally run just for demonstration purposes, but Odysseus ended up having to rely on it throughout the descent phase of its journey when its own navigation system stopped working, forcing the controller to upload a software patch to make the switch.
exclusive club
The remaining shipments were paid for by Intuitive Machines’ private customers, including 125 stainless steel mini-moons by artist Jeff Koons.
There is also an archive created by a non-profit organization whose goal is to leave a backup copy of human knowledge throughout the solar system.
NASA paid Intuitive Machines $118 million to transport its hardware under a new program called Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS), which aims to entrust cargo services to the private sector to achieve savings and Stimulate the wider lunar economy.
Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic launched the first CLPS mission in January, but its Peregrine spacecraft suffered a fuel leak and was eventually pulled back into Earth’s atmosphere and burned up.
Spacecraft landing on the moon must navigate dangerous boulders and craters and, in the absence of an atmosphere to support a parachute, must rely on thrusters to control their descent. About half of the more than 50 attempts failed.
To date, only the space agencies of the Soviet Union, the United States, China, India and Japan have accomplished this feat, forming a unique club.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
