Intuitive Machines plan for Odysseus lunar landing no earlier than 10:30 this evening

[6Foot2]

Link:

 

 

[Ditto]

I just read the thrusters slow it down to 1m/sec for landing - that still seems quite quick, but I expect the lower gravity (is that the right expression!?) means it not such a thump as it would be here!

[Ditto]

I found this longer than normal BBC article really interesting. The discussion about sand-blasting is fascinating and the information on cork even more so!

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240222-how-odysseus-will-help-future-moon-missions

[6Foot2]

Link: Intuitive Machines: US company makes historic Moon landing - BBC News

 

An American company has made history by becoming the first commercial outfit to put a spacecraft on the Moon.

 

Houston-based Intuitive Machines landed its Odysseus robot near the lunar south pole.

 

It took some minutes for controllers to establish that the craft was down, but eventually a signal was received.

 

"What we can confirm, without a doubt, is our equipment is on the surface of the Moon and we are transmitting," flight director Tim Crain announced.

 

Staff at the company cheered and clapped at the news.

 

It was an important moment, not just for the commercial exploitation of space but for the US space programme in general.

 

Intuitive Machines has broken the United States' half-century absence from the Moon's surface. You have to go back to the last Apollo mission in 1972 for an occasion when American hardware nestled down gently in the lunar soil.

 

The US space agency Nasa had purchased room on Odysseus for six scientific instruments, and its administrator Bill Nelson was quick to add his congratulations to Intuitive Machines for a mission he described as a "triumph".

 

"The US has returned to the Moon," he said. "Today, for the first time in the history of humanity, a commercial company - an American company - launched and led the voyage up there. And today is the day that shows the power and promise of Nasa's commercial partnerships."

 

Controllers had to deal with an almost mission-stopping technical problem even before the descent began.

 

Odysseus' ranging lasers, which were supposed to calculate the craft's altitude and velocity, weren't working properly.

 

Fortunately, there were some experimental lasers from Nasa on board, and engineers were able to patch these across to the navigation computers.

 

Odysseus touched down at 23:23 GMT. At first, there was no signal at all from the robot. There were plenty of nerves as the minutes ticked by, but eventually a communications link was made, albeit a faint one.

 

This led to some concerns about the status of the lander. Within a couple of hours, however, Intuitive Machines was reporting that Odysseus was standing upright and sending back data, including pictures.

 

The targeted landing site was a cratered terrain next to a 5km-high mountain complex known as Malapert. It's the southernmost point on the Moon ever visited by a spacecraft, at 80 degrees South.

 

It's on the shortlist of locations where Nasa is considering sending astronauts later this decade as part of its Artemis programme.

 

There are some deep craters in this region that never see any sunlight - they're permanently in shadow - and scientists think frozen water could be inside them.

 

"The ice is really important because if we can actually take advantage of that ice on the surface of the Moon, that's less materials we have to bring with us," explained Lori Glaze, Nasa's director of planetary science.

 

"We could use that ice to convert it to water - drinkable drinking water - and we can extract oxygen and hydrogen for fuel and for breathing for the astronauts. So it really helps us in human exploration."

 

Nasa's six payloads on board Odysseus are a mix of technology demonstration and science.

 

A key investigation will be one looking at the behaviour of lunar dust, which the Apollo astronauts found to be a serious nuisance, scratching and clogging their equipment.

 

The agency's scientists want to understand better how the dust is kicked up by landing craft to hang just above the surface before then settling back down.

 

The six commercial payloads on board include a student camera system from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, which should have been deployed from Odysseus when it was still 30m above the lunar surface.

 

This system was designed to take selfie images as the robot set itself down.

 

American artist Jeff Koons has also attached a box to the side of the lander that contains 125 small stainless steel balls to represent the Moon's different phases through a month.

[hallb15]

It has successfully landed.

https://news.sky.com/story/us-lander-successfully-touches-down-on-moon-for-first-time-in-over-50-years-13078510

 

@6Foot2 beat me to it!

[6Foot2]

 

Link: IM-2 | Intuitive Machines

 

Edit: Link: Private lunar lander touches down on the moon, but its condition is unknown | The Enterprise-Tocsin

 

A privately owned lunar lander touched down near the moon’s south pole Thursday, but as the minutes ticked by, flight controllers could not confirm its condition or whether it was even upright.

 

The last time Intuitive Machines landed a spacecraft on the moon, a year ago, it ended up sideways.

 

The company's newest Athena lander dropped out of lunar orbit as planned, carrying an ice drill, a drone and two rovers. The hourlong descent appeared to go well, but it took a while for Mission Control to confirm touchdown.

 

“It looks like we’re down”,” said mission director and co-founder Tim Crain. “We are working to evaluate exactly what our orientation is on the surface.”

 

Athena was communicating with controllers and generating solar power, officials said. But 20 minutes after touchdown, Crain still was unable to confirm if everything was all right with the lander. NASA and Intuitive Machines abruptly ended their live landing webcast, promising more updates at a news conference later in the afternoon...

Edited March 6, 2025 by 6Foot2

[6Foot2]

Link: Intuitive Machines: spacecraft can't complete Moon mission - BBC News

 

A private spacecraft that landed lopsided on the Moon does not have enough power to complete its mission, says the company Intuitive Machines.

 

Athena touched down on the lunar South Pole shortly after 1730GMT (1230EST) on Thursday, but it later was revealed the craft had landed on its side.

 

It was supposed to spend 10 days searching for water ice, but the position of its solar panels and the cold temperatures of the rocky region mean it cannot recharge.

 

Intuitive Machines partnered with US space agency Nasa to explore whether humans can live on the Moon.

 

"With the direction of the sun, the orientation of the solar panels, and extreme cold temperatures in the crater, Intuitive Machines does not expect Athena to recharge," the company said in a statement about the mission called IM-2.

 

Last year Intuitive Machines' first spacecraft also landed on its side, breaking a leg.

 

It is unlikely that the instruments on board can now be used, including a drill to penetrate the lunar soil, a hopping robot to explore a shadowed crater, and the first lunar antenna.

 

"Clearly the mission can only have achieved a fraction of its science goals," says Dr Simeon Barber, lunar scientist at the Open University.

 

But the ambitious mission still achieved milestones in ongoing exploration of the Moon.

 

Athena made it further south than any other lander, reaching the Mons Mouton region which is a flat-topped mountain about 100 miles (160km) from the South Pole.

 

Image caption,

It is considered a difficult and risky area to land in.

 

The sun is low in the sky and casts shadow that can confuse landers trying to touch down. And the amount of sunlight reaching the craft can limit how much electricity it produces in its solar panels.

 

Radio communications from Earth are also more difficult.

 

And Dr Barber says some of the instruments are likely to have been turned on briefly on Thursday, including the drill and a mass spectrometer that could identify chemicals in gases released from the lunar soil.

 

That is likely to generate some useful scientific information, he says.

 

The shortcomings of IM-2 are in contrast to the successful landing of a different private craft on Sunday by the company Blue Ghost in a different area of the Moon.

 

Nasa wants to send four astronauts to the Moon in 2027 in its Artemis programme. Its long-term goal is to take humans to Mars, using the Moon as a stepping stone.

 

It is working with private companies to drive down the cost of space exploration, but that means accepting a higher risk of failure.

 

"In face of setbacks, it requires a steady hand on the tiller and the vision to see the bigger picture", says Dr Barber, saying that knee-jerk responses to failures could "cause damage and delay".

 

Click the link above to see a one minute video.