For the first time in half a century, an American-made spacecraft landed on the moon.
The robotic lander was the first U.S. vehicle to reach the moon’s surface since Apollo 17 in 1972, marking the final chapter in humanity’s incredible feat of sending people to the moon and bringing them all back to life. It is a feat that has not been repeated or attempted since then.
The lander, named Odysseus, is slightly larger than a telephone booth and arrived at the moon’s south pole region at 6:23 p.m. ET on Thursday.
Landing time passed in silence as flight controllers awaited confirmation of success. A brief communication outage was expected, but several minutes passed.
Later, Tim Crane, chief technology officer of Intuitive Machines, the Houston-based company that built Odysseus, reported that a faint signal had been detected from the spacecraft.
“It’s faint, but it’s there,” he said. “Now wait, everyone. Let’s see what’s going on here.”
After a while, he announced: “What we can definitely confirm is that our equipment is on the surface of the moon and is transmitting. Well then, congratulations.”
He then added, “Houston, Odysseus has found a new home.”
But the applause and high-five celebrations at the mission control center were muted because the spacecraft’s ability to communicate properly remains unclear.
Later in the evening, the company reported more promising news.
“After communications troubleshooting, flight controllers confirmed that Odysseus was upright and beginning to transmit data,” Intuitive Machines said in a statement. “Currently, we are working on downlinking the first images from the lunar surface.”
Although this undertaking was much smaller than the Apollo program that sent astronauts to walk on the moon, NASA’s hope is that it will lead to a more revolutionary era as far as spaceflight is concerned. It helped usher in economical means of transportation around the solar system.
“I think it’s a smart thing that NASA is trying to do,” said Carissa Christensen, CEO of space consulting firm Blytech. It’s about building an ecosystem of providers.”
Intuitive Machines is one of several small companies hired by NASA to transport equipment for lunar reconnaissance ahead of the planned return of NASA astronauts to the surface later this decade. There is one company.
For this mission, NASA paid Intuitive Machines $118 million under a program known as Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) to capture the swirl of dust kicked up by Odysseus as it approached. Six devices, including a stereo camera, were delivered to the moon for this purpose. Measure the effects of charged particles on radio signals using surfaces and radio receivers.
There were also shipments from other customers, including cameras made by students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., and an art project by Jeff Koons. Parts of the spacecraft were wrapped in reflective material made by Columbia Sportswear.
Odysseus departed Earth early on February 15th aboard a SpaceX rocket. It entered lunar orbit on Wednesday.
Preparations leading up to landing included some last-minute shuffling.
Intuitive Machines announced that the spacecraft will land on the moon Thursday at 5:30 p.m. after entering lunar orbit. On Thursday morning, the company announced that the spacecraft would move to a higher altitude and land at 4:24 p.m.
Then, on Thursday afternoon, the landing time was changed again, with the company announcing that it would need to make one more orbit around the moon before the landing attempt at 6:24 p.m. A company spokeswoman said the laser equipment that provides data about the spacecraft’s altitude and speed was not working.
The additional orbit took two hours to modify the spacecraft’s software to replace another experimental laser instrument provided by NASA.
At 6:11 p.m., Odysseus ignited her engines and began a powered descent. The laser equipment seemed to be functioning as a suitable aid, and everything seemed to be working until the spacecraft went silent for several minutes.
Odysseus’ landing site was a flat area near Malapart A crater, about 295 miles north of the moon’s south pole. The moon’s polar regions have attracted a lot of attention in recent years because of the frozen water hidden in the shadows of craters.
Going to the moon turned out to be a difficult feat to accomplish. Outside of the United States, only the Soviet Union, China, India, and Japan’s government space programs have successfully placed robotic landers on the moon. Two companies, Japan’s Ispace and Pittsburgh’s Astrobotic Technology, have tried and failed in the past, as has Israeli nonprofit SpaceIL.
Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus said in a pre-launch interview that he hopes NASA sticks to the idea of saving the moon, even if Odysseus crashes, within budget.
“That’s really the only way to move forward,” he said. “That’s the purpose of this experiment.”
In the past, NASA built its own spacecraft.
Before Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon, NASA sent a series of robotic spacecraft Surveyor 1 to Surveyor 7 to verify landing techniques and study the properties of the moon’s soil. I did. These robotic landings allayed fears that astronauts and spacecraft would sink into a thick layer of fine dust on the moon’s surface.
But when NASA designs and operates the spacecraft itself, its designs tend to be expensive, as it generally seeks to maximize the probability of success.
The Apollo moon landings from 1969 to 1972 became the paradigm for a gigantic program that tackled a nearly impossible problem to solve on a nearly infinite budget: the proverbial moonshot. CLPS, on the other hand, seeks to harness the enthusiasm and ingenuity of emerging entrepreneurs.
Thomas Zurbuchen, a former top NASA science official who started the CLPS program in 2018, said a robotic lunar lander designed, built and operated in traditional NASA fashion would cost between $500 million and $1 billion. I estimated that I would need at least 5 times as much space. The agency paid his Intuitive Machines.
NASA hopes that capitalism and competition, where companies propose different approaches, will foster innovation and create new capabilities at lower costs.
But even if they succeed, these companies face uncertain business prospects that will attract many customers beyond NASA and other space agencies.
“It’s not clear who the other customers are,” Christensen said.
Intuitive Machines is under contract for two more CLPS missions, and other companies are expected to take on the mission to the moon. Pittsburgh-based company Astrobotic Technology is conducting a second mission in preparation to move NASA’s robotic rover into one of its shadow regions where ice may exist. Firefly Aerospace, based near Austin, Texas, is almost ready for the Blue Ghost lander, but has not yet announced a launch date.