NASA paid Intuitive Machines more than $100 million to ship its science hardware on missions.
Washington:
U.S. companies are scheduled to launch a rocket to the moon on February 14, NASA said on Wednesday, less than a month after a similar mission failed and the spacecraft burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Upcoming attempts include a lander built by Houston-based Intuitive Machines affixed to the top of a SpaceX rocket, while the last attempt involved a United Launch Alliance rocket and an Astrobotics lander.
But the stakes remain high: achieving the first U.S. soft landing on the lunar surface since the end of the Apollo era five years ago, and the first for private industry.
SpaceX is aiming for a 12:57am (0557GMT) launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander expected to touch down in an impact crater near the moon’s south pole on February 22.
NASA paid Intuitive Machines more than $100 million to deliver its science hardware on the mission, part of a broader strategy to stimulate the lunar economy and delegate routine cargo missions to the private sector.
The Nova-C lander’s payload includes instruments to better understand the lunar environment as NASA prepares to return human astronauts to the celestial body later this decade under the Artemis program.
It also includes more colorful goods, including sculptures by artist Jeff Koons.
Only five countries have achieved a soft landing on the moon. First the Soviet Union, then the United States, which remains the only country to land a man on the moon. China has achieved this feat three times in the past decade, followed by India and finally Japan.
Japan’s lander touched down on January 20, but ended up flipping over, causing its solar panels to lose balance.
Astrobotic’s failure was the third for a non-governmental mission, following crashes by an Israeli non-profit in 2019 and by a Japanese company in 2023.
Landing on the moon is complicated by the treacherous terrain and lack of atmosphere, which means parachutes are not an option and spacecraft must use thrusters to achieve a controlled descent.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
