SpaceX Launches Lunar Lander Into Lunar Orbit

Paresh Jadhav

10 months ago

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket successfully delivered Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 Lander into lunar orbit late Thursday evening despite launching late. Odysseus, as this spacecraft is known, will carry both commercial payloads – such as Columbia Sportswear metallic jacket fabric – and NASA instruments under their Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.

Next week, NASA hopes to attempt landing on the moon – with 16 milestones ahead to clear before that can take place.

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Launch

Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket lifted off Thursday morning, carrying with it the privately built lunar lander IM-1 for its inaugural private lunar landing mission attempt.

Odysseus, NASA’s 14-foot Nova-C lander, launched at 1:05 a.m. from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 1:05 am ET today and will head toward the Moon’s south pole region before making an attempt at landing Feb 22. It will spend one week orbiting before making its attempt on landing Feb 22.

NASA paid $118 million for this mission and hopes that if successful landing takes place, technologies to enhance precision and efficiency of future spacecraft landing will be demonstrated. Columbia Sportswear as well as sculptor Jeff Koons both carry experiments aboard for testing purposes on this spacecraft.

NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program has contracted this lander for flight. If successful, it will become the first American spacecraft to soft-land on the Moon since Apollo 17’s successful landing on December 1972.

Orbit

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Florida Intuitive Machines’ spacecraft has launched off toward the moon for their inaugural attempt at landing there commercially. Dubbed Odysseus after Homer’s hero from Homer’s epic poem Odyssey, Odysseus will attempt to land near its south pole where NASA hopes to search for signs of water within permanently shadowed craters on the lunar surface.

Intuitive Machines announced that eight hours after launch, its lunar lander known as IM-1 separated from its rocket’s upper stage and will begin its week-long trip toward lunar surface. NASA is paying Houston-based Intuitive Machines $118 Million under their new Commercial Lunar Payload Services program for carrying several scientific payloads with it onboard the IM-1.

NASA hopes the program will prompt private companies to help accelerate Artemis campaign by sending more cargo and astronauts back to the moon.

Landing

As with the four other countries that have successfully sent spacecraft to land on the Moon — including the US, Russia, China and India as well as Japan this month — only five private companies have ever attempted this feat, none of them succeeding and all but one crashing onto lunar surfaces or exploding into flames during launch attempts.

Odysseus, Intuitive Machine’s 14-foot-tall lunar lander named for Homer’s hero from The Odyssey, will make its target landing location on the south pole crater region of the Moon. NASA hopes a landing here could provide researchers with additional knowledge of its environment as well as whether or not water exists there; knowledge essential for any extended missions to the surface.

Intuitive Machines’ lander will carry both NASA experiments as well as commercial payloads from companies like Columbia Sportswear and artist Jeff Koons’ 125 inch-sized moon figurines in see-through cubes. If everything goes according to plan, astronauts in Houston could proclaim “Houston, we have a lander!” on Feb 22.

Mission Control

Intuitive Machines has launched their Nova-C lander Odysseus to the Moon as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program IM-1 mission, carrying 12 government and commercial payloads including six for NASA under an $118 million contract.

Houston-based SpaceX hopes to become the first private-sector firm to successfully land a robotic spacecraft on the Moon, following Japan’s successful Lunar Lander drop into its Sea of Nectar last month.

Intuitive Machines’ lunar lander will land near Malapert A crater near its south pole during each lunar blackout period – typically lasting only several days each month then deposit laser retroreflectors left by Apollo astronauts as well as various science instruments including plume-surface interactions, radio astronomy, and precision landing technologies.