WATCH | US lunar lander to launch rocket to moon next week for landing attempt

The lunar lander, built by U.S. aerospace company Intuitive Machines, launched from Florida early Thursday on a mission to conduct the first U.S. lunar landing in more than half a century.

A month ago, a rival lunar lander failed to meet its intended target and crashed. NASA, the main sponsor of the experiments on board, hopes to successfully land on the moon next week as it attempts to kick-start the lunar economy ahead of astronaut missions.

In the middle of the night, a Falcon rocket was launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, sending a lunar lander to the moon 370,000 kilometers away. Like a stunning six-pointed star gem, the lander successfully separated from its upper layers and floated into the black void with the blue Earth below.

Choose five

If all goes well, a landing attempt will be made on February 22 after a day in lunar orbit. Only five countries—the United States, Russia, China, India, and Japan—have landed on the moon, and no private industry has done so. The United States has not returned to the lunar surface since the Apollo program ended more than fifty years ago. “We spent a lot of sleepless nights doing this,” Intuitive Machines co-founder and CEO Steve Altemus said before the flight.

The Houston-based company aims to land its 4.3-meter-tall hexapod lander just 300 kilometers from the moon’s south pole, equivalent to landing in Earth’s Antarctica. The area is filled with dangerous craters and cliffs but may be rich in frozen water, where NASA plans to land astronauts later this decade. NASA says six navigation and technology experiments on the lander could help pave the way.

NASA’s first commercial lunar transportation service – Astrobotic Technology’s Peregrine lander – suffered a setback shortly after liftoff in early January. A ruptured fuel tank and massive leak caused the spacecraft to orbit the moon and return through the atmosphere, disintegrating and burning over the Pacific Ocean 10 days after launch. Others made it to the moon before crashing.

An Israeli nonprofit’s lander crashed in 2019. Last year, a Tokyo-based company’s lander crashed into the moon and subsequently crashed in Russia. Only the United States has ever sent astronauts to the moon, with Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt ending the program in December 1972. So much for American moon landings, until Astrobotic’s brief attempt last month. Intuitive Machines nicknamed its lander after the Homeric hero from “The Odyssey.”

The company has also recruited its own clients, including Columbia Sportswear, which is testing a metallic jacket fabric as insulation for lander, and sculptor Jeff Koons, who is developing Place the 125-inch moon statue in a clear cube. . The lander also carries Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Eaglecam, which will take photos of the lander as it descends. The spacecraft will remain on the ground for a week before decommissioning.

(with AP input)