The United States once again challenged the moon landing, planning to land near the moon's south pole in late February
The U.S. Odysseus lander is scheduled to land on the lunar surface about nine days after its launch, about 300 kilometers from the south pole on the front side of the moon. If all goes well, it will be the first U.S. spacecraft to make a soft landing on the lunar surface since the Apollo 17 moon landing in 1972.
The commercial lunar lander "Odysseus" of the American company Intuitive Machine.
The U.S. commercial lunar lander is once again challenging the moon landing, with a landing near the moon's south pole scheduled for late February.
At 14:05 Beijing time on February 15 (1:05 EST on February 15), SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket launched the American Intuitive Machine's commercial lunar lander Odysseus (Odysseus) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. If all goes well, this will be the first U.S. spacecraft to make a soft landing on the lunar surface since the Apollo 17 moon landing in 1972.
The mission, codenamed IM-1, is based in Houston-based Intuitive Machines that hopes to be the first private company to make a soft landing on the lunar surface. The Odysseus lander is scheduled to land on the moon about nine days after launch, around the Malapert A crater near the moon's south pole. According to the New York Times, Odysseus will enter orbit around the moon 24 hours before landing, about 185 miles (about 297.7 kilometers) from the south pole on the far side of the moon, where the terrain is relatively flat and easier to land.
The landing sequence of the IM-1 mission lasted about two minutes. If successful, the lander will orbit the lunar surface for about a week until a cold moonlit night falls. "I am quite confident that we will successfully achieve a soft landing on the moon. Stephen Altemus, president and CEO of Intuitive Machines, said, "We've done the tests. We tested again and again, doing as many tests as we could. ”
The IM-1 mission was launched.
The Odysseus lander is a hexagonal cylinder with six landing legs, and the Intuition Machine has said that the main body of the lander is about the size of an old-fashioned British telephone booth. With a full load of propellant, the lander weighs about 4200 pounds (about 1905.1 kilograms).
NASA was the main customer for the flight, and according to the New York Times, NASA paid $118 million to Intuition Machines to transport payloads and spent an additional $11 million to develop and build six instruments.
"Odysseus" Each of the six instruments carried for NASA will serve a role: a laser reflective array will serve as a precise landmark for future landers, new LiDAR-based sensors will test new landing techniques to accurately measure the altitude and speed of the lander as it descends to the lunar surface, a miniature video camera will be used to study the interaction of the lander's feather flame with the lunar surface, a radio navigation beacon will help test autonomous landing and positioning techniques, a low-frequency radio receiver will be used to measure the effects of charged particles near the lunar surface on radio signals, and an instrument in the propellant tank uses radio waves to measure the amount of fuel remaining in the tank。
The lander also carried six payloads for commercial customers, including an experiment with special insulation, a series of sculptures by artist Jeff Koons, and a "safe lunar warehouse" containing literary works and historical archives.
The mission is part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program (CLPS), the second time NASA has launched a scientific payload to the Moon from a private spacecraft. CLPS missions like IM-1 are paving the way for NASA's Artemis program to return to the moon, allowing NASA to do more missions cheaper and more often. NASA officials have said that by building an infrastructure network on the surface of the moon for Artemis astronauts, these commercial missions will lay the groundwork for NASA's future moon landings.
This follows the launch of the first payload of the CLPS from Astrobotic's Peregrine Commercial Lunar Lander on January 8. However, this attempt to land on the moon ended in failure. Shortly after launch, the Peregrine Falcon suffered an anomaly, with a malfunctioning propulsion system that hindered the landing on the moon. Ten days later, the Peregrine Falcon flew back to Earth and burned up in the atmosphere.