Another month, another day, another attempt at the moon.
A robotic lunar lander is scheduled to launch in the early hours of Thursday, a day after a technical problem delayed the first launch attempt. If all goes well, it will become the first US spacecraft to gently touch down on the surface of the Moon since Apollo 17 landed in 1972.
It is also the last private attempt to send spacecraft to the moon. Previous attempts have failed. But the company behind the latest effort, Intuitive Machines of Houston, is optimistic.
“I feel pretty confident that we will be successful when we gently touch the moon,” said Stephen Altemus, president and CEO of Intuitive Machines. “We did the tests. We tried and tried and tried. As many tests as we could do.”
When is the release and how can I watch?
Intuitive Machines, named Odysseus, is scheduled to launch at 1:05 am. ET on Thursday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The weather is expected to be favorable, with a 10 percent chance of conditions that will prohibit the launch.
SpaceX and NASA will broadcast coverage of the launch beginning at 12:20 p.m. Eastern time.
SpaceX announced late Tuesday that it was postponing a Wednesday morning launch attempt. The company said in a post on X that the temperature of the methane fuel for the aircraft was “off the mark”.
If another technical problem or bad weather delays the launch, SpaceX may try again on Friday.
When and where is the landing?
If the launch happens this week, the landing will take place on February 22 near a crater called Malapert A. (Malapert A is a satellite crater of the larger crater Malapert, which was named after Charles Malapert, a Belgian 17th century astronomer.)
Ulysses will orbit the moon about 24 hours before the landing attempt.
The landing site, about 185 miles from the south pole on the near side of the moon, is relatively flat, an easier location for a spacecraft to land. No US spacecraft has ever landed on the lunar south pole, which is the focus of many space agencies and companies because it can be rich in icy water.
How big is the spaceship?
Intuitive Machines calls the spacecraft design Nova-C and named the specific lander Ulysses. It is a hexagonal cylinder with six landing feet, about 14 feet high and 5 feet wide. Intuitive Machines points out that the lander’s body is about the size of an old British telephone booth — that is, like the Tardis in the sci-fi TV show “Doctor Who.”
At launch, with a full propellant load, the lander weighs about 4,200 pounds.
What will go to the moon?
NASA is the primary customer for the Intuitive Machines flight. pays the company $118 million to deliver its payloads. NASA also spent an additional $11 million to develop and build the six instruments on the flight:
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A laser reflector array to bounce laser beams fired from Earth.
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A LIDAR instrument to accurately measure the altitude and speed of the spacecraft as it descends on the lunar surface.
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A stereo camera to capture video of the dust plume thrown up by the lander’s engines during landing.
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A low-frequency radio receiver to measure the effects of charged particles near the lunar surface on radio signals.
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A beacon, Lunar Node-1, to demonstrate an autonomous navigation system.
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An instrument in the propellant tank that will use radio waves to measure how much fuel remains in the tank.
The aircraft is also carrying a few other payloads, including a camera built by students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. a precursor instrument for a future lunar telescope. and an artwork by Jeff Koons.
Wasn’t there just another US spaceship headed for the moon?
On January 8, Astrobotic Technology sent the Peregrine lander to the moon. But a malfunction in its propulsion system shortly after launch prevented any chance of landing. Ten days later, as Peregrine turned back to Earth, it burned up in the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean.
Both Odysseus and Peregrine are part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, program. The object of the program is to use commercial companies to send experiments to the moon instead of NASA building and operating its own lunar landers.
“We’ve always looked at these initial CLPS deliveries as kind of a learning experience,” Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said during a news conference Tuesday.
The space agency hopes this approach will be much cheaper, allowing it to send more missions more often as it prepares to send astronauts back to the Moon as part of the Artemis program.
