Private US moon lander set for launch half century after last Apollo lunar mission

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14/02/2024 02:43

By Joe Skipper and Steve Gorman
       CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida, Feb 13 (Reuters) - A robotic
moon lander built by Houston-based aerospace company Intuitive
Machines was set for launch early on Wednesday on a NASA mission
to conduct the first U.S. lunar touchdown in more than a half
century and the first by a privately owned vehicle.
    The company's Nova-C lander, dubbed Odysseus, was due for
liftoff shortly before 1 a.m. EST (0600 GMT) atop a SpaceX
Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape
Canaveral, Florida.
    Forecasts called for a 95% chance of favorable weather
conditions. 
    The launch comes 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
on a NASA mission, 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 illustrate 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 as early as Feb. 22 for a landing
at crater Malapert A near the moon's south pole.
    If successful, the flight, dubbed IM-1, 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 Elon Musk's SpaceX and
other 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 gather data about the lunar
environment. 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))