Private US moon lander launched half century after last Apollo lunar mission

Avid Bioservices

15/02/2024 06:06

By Joe Skipper and Steve Gorman
       CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida, Feb 15 (Reuters) - A moon
lander built by Houston-based aerospace company Intuitive
Machines was launched from Florida early on Thursday on a
mission to conduct the first U.S. lunar touchdown in more than a
half century and the first by a privately owned spacecraft.
    The company's Nova-C lander, dubbed Odysseus, lifted off
shortly after 1 a.m. EST (0600 GMT) atop a Falcon 9 rocket flown
by Elon Musk' SpaceX from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape
Canaveral.
        A live NASA-SpaceX online video feed showed the
two-stage, 25-story rocket roaring off the launch pad and
streaking into the dark sky over Florida's Atlantic coast,
trailed by a fiery yellowish plume of exhaust.
  
        The launch, previously set for Wednesday morning, was
postponed for 24 hours because of irregular temperatures
detected in liquid methane used in the lander's propulsion
system. SpaceX said the issue was later resolved.
  
    Although considered an Intuitive Machines mission, the IM-1
flight is carrying six NASA payloads of instruments designed to
gather data about the lunar environment ahead of NASA's planned
return of astronauts to the moon later this decade. 
    Thursday's launch came a month after the lunar lander of
another private firm, Astrobotic Technology, suffered a
propulsion system leak on its way to the moon shortly after
being placed in orbit on Jan. 8 by a United Launch Alliance
(ULA) Vulcan rocket making its debut flight. 
    The failure of Astrobotic's Peregrine lander, which was also
flying NASA payloads to the moon, marked the third time a
private company had been unable to achieve a "soft landing" on
the lunar surface, following ill-fated efforts by companies from
Israel and Japan.
    Those mishaps illustrated the risks NASA faces in leaning
more heavily on the commercial sector than it had in the past to
realize its spaceflight goals.
    Plans call for Intuitive Machines' Nova-C vehicle, a
hexagonal cylinder with four legs, to reach its destination
after about a weeklong flight on Feb. 22 for a landing at crater
Malapert A near the moon's south pole. 
    If successful, the flight would represent the first
controlled descent to the lunar surface by a U.S. spacecraft
since the final Apollo crewed moon mission in 1972, and the
first by a private company.
    The feat also would mark the first journey to the lunar
surface under NASA's Artemis moon program, as the U.S. races to
return astronauts to Earth's natural satellite before China
lands its own crewed spacecraft there.
    IM-1 is the latest test of NASA's strategy of paying for the
use of spacecraft built and owned by private companies to slash
the cost of the Artemis missions, envisioned as precursors to
human exploration of Mars.
    By contrast, during the Apollo era, NASA bought rockets and
other technology from the private sector, but owned and operated
them itself.
    NASA announced last month that it was delaying its target
date for a first crewed Artemis moon landing from 2025 to late
2026, while China has said it was aiming for 2030. 
     Small landers such as Nova-C are expected to get there
first, carrying instruments to closely survey the lunar
landscape, its resources and potential hazards. Odysseus will
focus on space weather interactions with the moon's surface,
radio astronomy, precision landing technologies and navigation.
    Intuitive Machine's IM-2 mission is scheduled to land at the
lunar south pole in 2024, followed by an IM-3 mission later in
the year with several small rovers.
    Last month, Japan became the fifth country to place a lander
on the moon, with its space agency JAXA achieving an unusually
precise "pinpoint" touchdown of its SLIM probe last month. Last
year, India became the fourth nation to land on the moon, after
Russia failed in an attempt the same month.
    The United States, the former Soviet Union and China are the
only other countries that have carried out successful soft lunar
touchdowns. China scored a world first in 2019 by achieving the
first landing on the far side of the moon.    

 (Reporting by Joe Skipper in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Steve
Gorman in Los Angeles. Editing by Gerry Doyle)
 ((steve.gorman@thomsonreuters.com; 310-491-7256; Reuters
Messaging: steve.gorman.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))