BREAKING NEWS
A privately built robotic spacecraft became the first American vehicle to land on the moon since 1972, but its precise state is uncertain.
Thursday, February 22, 2024 6:56 PM
While the spacecraft is on the moon and transmitting signals to Earth, the mission director said it was uncertain if the spacecraft would be able to achieve its objectives
SKIP TO CONTENTSKIP TO SITE INDEX
SEARCH & SECTION NAVIGATION
Highlights From the Successful Lunar Landing of the Spacecraft Odysseus
A mission from Intuitive Machines of Houston overcame last-minute difficulties that engineers had to work around. The company said the first privately built vehicle to make it to the moon “is upright and starting to send data” back to Earth.
Feb. 22, 2024Updated 10:44 p.m. ET
- Share full article
Pinned
Updated Feb. 22, 2024, 10:44 p.m. ET38 minutes ago38 minutes ago
For the first time since 1972, an American-built spacecraft is on the moon’s surface.
For the first time in a half-century, an American-built spacecraft has landed on the moon.
The robotic lander was the first U.S. vehicle on the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972, the closing chapter in humanity’s astonishing achievement of sending people to the moon and bringing them all back alive. That is a feat that has not been repeated or even tried since.
The lander, named Odysseus and a bit bigger than a telephone booth, arrived in the south polar region of the moon at 6:23 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday.
The landing time came and went in silence as flight controllers waited to hear confirmation of success. A brief communication pause was expected, but minutes passed.
Then Tim Crain, the chief technology officer of Intuitive Machines, the Houston-based company that built Odysseus, reported that a faint signal from the spacecraft had been detected.
“It’s faint, but it’s there,” he said. “So stand by, folks. We’ll see what’s happening here.”
A short while later, he announced, “What we can confirm, without a doubt, is our equipment is on the surface of the moon and we are transmitting. So congratulations.”
Later, he added, “Houston, Odysseus has found its new home.”
But with the spacecraft’s ability to properly communicate still unclear, the celebration of clapping and high-fives in the mission control center was muted.
Later in the evening, the company reported more promising news.
“After troubleshooting communications, flight controllers have confirmed Odysseus is upright and starting to send data,” Intuitive Machines said in a statement. “Right now, we are working to downlink the first images from the lunar surface.”
While this venture was much more modest than the Apollo missions that led to astronauts walking on the moon, the hope at NASA was that it could help inaugurate a more revolutionary era: transportation around the solar system that is economical as far as spaceflight is concerned.
“I think it is a smart thing that NASA is trying to do,” said Carissa Christensen, chief executive of BryceTech, a space consulting firm, “which is to essentially create a competitive ecosystem of providers to meet its needs.”
Intuitive Machines is one of several small companies that NASA has hired to transport instruments that will perform reconnaissance on the moon’s surface ahead of the return of NASA astronauts there, planned for later this decade.
For this mission, NASA paid Intuitive Machines $118 million under a program known as Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, to deliver six instruments to the moon, including a stereo camera that aimed to capture the billowing of dust kicked up by Odysseus as it approached the surface and a radio receiver to measure the effects of charged particles on radio signals.
There was also cargo from other customers, like a camera built 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 left Earth early on Feb. 15 aboard a SpaceX rocket. It pulled into lunar orbit on Wednesday.
The lead-up to the landing included last-minute shuffling.
After the spacecraft entered lunar orbit, Intuitive Machines said it would land on the moon at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday. On Thursday morning, the company said the spacecraft had moved to a higher altitude and would land at 4:24 p.m.
Then on Thursday afternoon, the landing time changed again, with the company saying that an extra lap around the moon would be needed before the 6:24 p.m. landing attempt. A company spokesman said a laser instrument on the spacecraft that was to provide data on its altitude and velocity was not working.
The extra orbit provided two hours for changes in the spacecraft’s software to substitute a different, experimental laser instrument, which had been provided by NASA.
At 6:11 p.m., Odysseus fired its engine to begin its powered descent to the surface. The laser instrument appeared to serve as a suitable fill-in, and everything appeared to be working until the spacecraft went silent for several minutes.
The landing site for Odysseus was a flat area near the Malapert A crater, about 185 miles north of the moon’s south pole. The moon’s polar regions have attracted much interest in recent years because of frozen water hidden in the shadows of craters there.
Getting to the moon has proved to be a tricky feat to pull off. Other than the United States, only the government space programs of the Soviet Union, China, India and Japan have successfully put robotic landers on the moon’s surface. Two companies — Ispace of Japan and Astrobotic Technology of Pittsburgh — had previously tried and failed, as has an Israeli nonprofit, SpaceIL.
In an interview before launch, Steve Altemus, the chief executive of Intuitive Machines, said he hoped NASA would persevere with the moon-on-a-budget mindset even if Odysseus crashed.
No“It’s the only way to really go forward,” he said. “That’s what this experiment is supposed to do.”
In the past, NASA would have built its own spacecraft.
Before Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon, NASA sent a series of robotic spacecraft, Surveyor 1 through Surveyor 7, to validate landing techniques and examine the properties of the lunar soil. Those robotic landings allayed concerns that astronauts and spacecraft would sink into a thick layer of fine dust on the moon’s surface.
But when NASA designs and operates spacecraft itself, it generally seeks to maximize the odds of success, and its designs tend to be expensive.
The Apollo moon landings from 1969 to 1972 became a paradigm for a colossal program that tackled a problem nearly impossible to solve with a near-limitless budget — the proverbial moonshot — while CLPS seeks to harness the enthusiasm and ingenuity of start-up entrepreneurs.
Thomas Zurbuchen, a former top NASA science official who started the CLPS program in 2018, estimated that a robotic lunar lander designed, built and operated in the traditional NASA manner would cost $500 million to $1 billion, or at least five times as much the space agency paid Intuitive Machines.
NASA hopes that capitalism and competition — with companies proposing different approaches — will spur innovation and lead to new capabilities at lower costs.
But even if they succeed, these companies face uncertain business prospects attracting many customers beyond NASA and other space agencies.
“It’s not obvious who those other customers might be,” Ms. Christensen said.
Intuitive Machines has contracts for two more CLPS missions, and other companies are expected to take their shots at the moon, too. Astrobotic Technology, the Pittsburgh-based company, has a second mission in preparation to take a robotic NASA rover to one of the shadowed regions where there might be ice. Firefly Aerospace, near Austin, Texas, has its Blue Ghost lander mostly ready but has not yet announced a launch date.Show less
Feb. 22, 2024, 9:30 p.m. ET2 hours ago2 hours ago
Why did the bill to NASA grow by tens of millions of dollars?
In May 2019, NASA announced that it would pay Intuitive Machines $77 million to send five payloads to the moon.
Intuitive Machines and other companies in its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, or CLPS, have signed fixed-price contracts to deliver NASA payloads to the moon. Such contracts mean that if something goes wrong and costs increase, generally it is the companies, and not NASA, that would cover the difference.
But by the time Intuitive Machines made it to the moon on Thursday, NASA said it was paying the company nearly $118 million, an increase of close to 50 percent. What happened?
The main reason is that NASA changed its mind about where it wanted to go and how much it wanted to send. That is like remodeling your home and then deciding midway through the project that you want a fancier bathroom. The contractor is going to charge you for that.
NASA originally wanted Intuitive Machines send its Odysseus mission land in an easier-to-reach spot in the equatorial region of the moon called Oceanus Procellarum. It is a huge, scientifically intriguing dark spot on the near side of the moon.
However, with future missions that will take astronauts toward the moon’s south pole region, NASA wanted the Intuitive Machines lander to take an early look. Thus, NASA asked Intuitive Machines to change the landing site for Odysseus to a location near a crater named Malapert A, the farthest south that any lunar lander had targeted. That change cost an extra $28.4 million.
NASA also added almost $12 million to compensate for disruptions that companies experienced during the coronavirus pandemic and for changes in what it was sending on the mission.Show more
ADVERTISEMENTSKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Feb. 22, 2024, 8:50 p.m. ET3 hours ago3 hours ago
Michael Roston
In a post on the social media site X, Intuitive Machines just announced that “Odysseus is upright and starting to send data.” The company said it is working on bringing the spacecraft’s first images from the moon’s surface to Earth.
Feb. 22, 2024, 8:30 p.m. ET3 hours ago3 hours ago
The entrepreneur who helped start Intuitive Machines has more plans for private space exploration.
Much of the American space program is run out of nondescript offices in the Washington, D.C., suburbs. That’s where Kam Ghaffarian, the billionaire space entrepreneur, could be found recently on an auspicious day. Exactly 47 years before, he had immigrated to the United States from Iran. Mr. Ghaffarian, 66, sat at a table made of gently glowing white onyx, also from Iran.
Just a few weeks later, Mr. Ghaffarian’s company, Intuitive Machines, did something no private organization has ever done: Touched down softly on the surface of the moon.
Mr. Ghaffarian specializes in moonshots. His array of companies includes not just the one that sent a lander to the moon on Thursday, but also one building a space station to put in orbit around the Earth, another designing advanced nuclear reactors, a venture fund and a nonprofit studying faster-than-light travel technology. His projects are the kind that Silicon Valley frets about having given up on. They are bets on tangible technology, not software, where metrics like hits and clicks are replaced with the hard questions of physics.
And while bombastic billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have captured attention for their efforts to launch futuristic reusable rockets, the lower-profile Mr. Ghaffarian’s companies have helped answer the question of what to do with them, becoming crucial in the increasingly close partnership between NASA and private industry. SpaceX’s key innovation has been building rockets that have brought down the cost of going to space. Mr. Ghaffarian’s firms are using those cheap rockets to commercialize space activity in ways that Mr. Musk’s SpaceX hasn’t pursued, while Mr. Bezos’ Blue Origin has yet to reach orbit.
Mr. Ghaffarian is a believer in that public-private model. “If you look at cars or planes and all of that, there were entrepreneurs who created that and changed the game, right?” he said. “What comes to mind is Henry Ford or Howard Hughes.”Show more
Feb. 22, 2024, 8:14 p.m. ET3 hours ago3 hours ago
Michael Roston
In a post on the social network X, Thomas Zurbuchen, the former NASA official who helped start the program that paid for the scientific devices aboard Odysseus, called the mission “a huge initial success for the landing, a true space and commercial milestone.” He wished Intuitive Machines and NASA officials luck as they sought scientific results and data from the mission.
ADVERTISEMENTSKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Feb. 22, 2024, 7:45 p.m. ET4 hours ago4 hours ago
The next spacecraft heading to the moon could be from China.
After Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander, the next spacecraft to head to the moon may be Chang’e-6 from China, which will try to add to the country’s cache of lunar rocks and soil.
The China National Space Administration has announced that the launch is scheduled for sometime during the first half of this year. Chang’e-6 is essentially a repeat of Chang’e-5, which in 2020 returned the first set of moon samples to Earth since the 1970s, though they were from a different part of the moon.
Chang’e-5 landed at Mons Rümker, a volcanic plain on the near side of the moon. Mons Rümker is much younger than the sites investigated by NASA’s Apollo astronauts and the Soviet Union’s Luna robotic landers, which also returned rock samples to Earth. Planetary samples were keen to perform precise dating based on radioactive elements in the rocks. Using that data helps calibrate techniques for estimating the ages of geological surfaces on planets, moons and asteroids throughout the solar system.
The destination for Chang’e-6 is a spot on the far side of the moon within the 1,500-mile-wide South Pole-Aitken basin, the scar of an immense impact more than 4 billion years ago. Planetary scientists speculate that the impact might have been so violent that some of the moon’s mantle, usually located miles under the crust, could have been ejected onto the surface.
Chinese scientists expect to find rocks of a wide range of ages at the landing site.
China has more ambitious moon plans. It has announced that it is aiming to land its astronauts on the moon by 2030 and that it wants to build a lunar base near the south pole. So far, all of the Chinese lunar missions have succeeded — a stark contrast to the struggles of others aiming to land on the moon.Show more
Feb. 22, 2024, 7:30 p.m. ET4 hours ago4 hours ago
There are more private landers headed to the moon.
Whatever the state of Intuitive Machines’ spacecraft on the surface of the moon, it certainly will not be the last private company to try to get there. In fact, following this mission, it may even be the next company to try again.
A second Intuitive Machines mission aims to send a lander of the same design as Odysseus to another site near the south pole, not far from the 13-mile-wide Shackleton Crater, where water ice may be found below the surface. This lander, which is also part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, will carry three technology demonstrations for NASA, including a drill that will attempt to bore three feet into the ground.
Ispace, a Japanese company, failed on its first landing attempt in 2023. Its second moon mission will uses a lander nearly identical to the one that crashed, with fixes to its software to avoid another crash. It will carry a small rover.
Astrobotic, which tried and failed to reach the moon earlier this year, is currently scheduled to carry VIPER, a NASA rover costing more than $400 million, to the south pole region later in 2024. Given that VIPER requires a new, larger lander and that Astrobotic remains unproven at landing on the moon, NASA could decide to delay the mission, which will play a key role in exploring the permanently shadowed craters before its astronauts explore them during future missions.
Another company joining the rush to the moon is Firefly of Cedar Park, Texas. It is planning to launch its Blue Ghost lunar lander on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in the middle of this year.
As with the Intuitive Machines mission, NASA is the primary customer for the Firefly flight, paying Firefly at least $93 million under the CLPS program to take 10 instruments weighing about 330 pounds to Mare Crisium, a dark volcanic plain on the near side of the moon.Show more
ADVERTISEMENTSKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Feb. 22, 2024, 6:39 p.m. ET5 hours ago5 hours ago
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
Mr. Crain said Odysseus is definitely on the moon and operating but it remains to be seen whether the mission can achieve its objectives.
Feb. 22, 2024, 6:37 p.m. ET5 hours ago5 hours ago
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
Tim Crain, the chief technology officer who is leading mission control, said, “We’re not dead yet,” referencing a line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. He said they are receiving a faint signal from the spacecraft’s high-gain antenna.
Feb. 22, 2024, 6:31 p.m. ET5 hours ago5 hours ago
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
It’s possible that Odysseus has crashed. It’s also possible there’s just a communications glitch.
Feb. 22, 2024, 6:28 p.m. ET5 hours ago5 hours ago
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
Flight controllers are going through the last data they received, looking for clues about whether it’s a communications glitch or a more serious issue. Three minutes have passed since the expected landing time.
ADVERTISEMENTSKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Feb. 22, 2024, 6:26 p.m. ET5 hours ago5 hours ago
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
Still waiting to hear from the spacecraft.
Feb. 22, 2024, 6:25 p.m. ET5 hours ago5 hours ago
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
A short interruption in communications was expected.
Feb. 22, 2024, 6:25 p.m. ET5 hours ago5 hours ago
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
The expected time of landing has come and passed. Now flight controllers wait for the spacecraft to get back in touch.
Feb. 22, 2024, 6:23 p.m. ET5 hours ago5 hours ago
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
The lander is deciding where it will land. Less than one minute.
ADVERTISEMENTSKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Feb. 22, 2024, 6:23 p.m. ET5 hours ago5 hours ago
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
The lander has performed the “pitchover” maneuver to a vertical orientation needed for a safe landing
Feb. 22, 2024, 6:22 p.m. ET5 hours ago5 hours ago
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
There is a long pause after a request for the altitude.
Feb. 22, 2024, 6:22 p.m. ET5 hours ago5 hours ago
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
Two minutes until touchdown.
Feb. 22, 2024, 6:21 p.m. ET5 hours ago5 hours ago
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
Three minutes until landing time.
ADVERTISEMENTSKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Feb. 22, 2024, 6:19 p.m. ET5 hours ago5 hours ago
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
Even if the landing is successful, it’ll take a little bit — from 15 seconds to several minutes — before confirmation that it is safe on the surface. A short hiccup in communications after landing would not be necessarily worrisome.
Feb. 22, 2024, 6:18 p.m. ET5 hours ago5 hours ago
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
The propulsion system is operating properly.
Feb. 22, 2024, 6:15 p.m. ET5 hours ago5 hours ago
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
10 minutes until planned landing time.
Feb. 22, 2024, 6:14 p.m. ET5 hours ago5 hours ago
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
Everything seems to be going well so far as we watch an animation of the landing.
ADVERTISEMENTSKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Feb. 22, 2024, 6:12 p.m. ET5 hours ago5 hours ago
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
The Odysseus lander has started its power descent. This is a 11-minute engine burn to slow down from 4,000 miles per hour. It is now on a path of no return to the lunar surface.
Feb. 22, 2024, 6:00 p.m. ET5 hours ago5 hours ago
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
A mixed record for moon landings this year.
So far in 2024, humanity is one-for-two when it comes to landings of robotic spacecraft on the moon, though even the successful one, by JAXA, the Japanese space agency, was not quite perfect.
The Japanese spacecraft, Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, launched in September. Taking a long, slow but fuel-efficient path to the moon, it fired its engines to head to the surface on Jan. 19.
The main mission of SLIM was to test a vision-based navigation system and efficient computing algorithms, each designed to set the spacecraft within about 100 yards of a desired landing site. That is much better accuracy than technology on earlier spacecraft, where the uncertainty could be many miles.
JAXA officials said that SLIM’s technology appears to have met its objectives for a precision landing, with the spacecraft arriving intact at the surface. Japan thus became the fifth nation to successfully put a spacecraft on the moon.
But, just before landing, about 150 feet above the lunar surface, one of SLIM’s two main engines appears to have failed. The other engine attempted to compensate, but SLIM ended up tipping into an awkward position, with its engine nozzle pointed upward to space.
SLIM was still able to send radio signals back to Earth, telling JAXA officials that it had arrived. But its solar panels were facing the wrong direction, away from the sun, and the battery ran out of power less than three hours after landing.
As the sun shifted and struck its solar panels nine Earth days later, SLIM revived. The spacecraft was able to take some photographs and perform some measurements on nearby rocks before the sun set and SLIM again fell silent.
Another mission’s outcome was more clear-cut.
On Jan. 8, a lunar lander built by Astrobotic Technology of Pittsburgh headed to space carrying payloads for NASA, much like Intuitive Machines’s lander. But soon after it separated from its rocket, the lander suffered a major malfunction of its propulsion system.
As a result, it never even got close to the moon. Instead, when it swung back toward Earth, it ended up burning up in the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean.Show more
Feb. 22, 2024, 5:47 p.m. ET6 hours ago6 hours ago
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
Intuitive Machines said the original laser instrument it planned to rely on for guidance during descent is not working. The two-hour delay from the extra orbit allowed the uploading of updated software to use a LIDAR instrument provided by NASA instead. NASA’s LIDAR instrument was intended to be experimental, not operational but it turns out to be a very handy backup.
ADVERTISEMENTSKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Feb. 22, 2024, 5:38 p.m. ET6 hours ago6 hours ago
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
What will happen as Odysseus tries to land on the moon.
Intuitive Machines had a landing plan for Odysseus that it announced in recent weeks. In the past day, that plan has changed substantially.
It started with an engine burn last night, which shifted the spacecraft to an elliptical orbit.
That adjusted orbit moved up the landing time but then flight controllers decided to make an extra orbit around the moon, pushing the landing time back by two hours.
At 6:11 p.m. Eastern time, the engine on Odysseus will start up again, and the spacecraft will begin its powered descent, slowing itself down. This will be the point of no return, and the spacecraft will be operating entirely on its own.
At 6:22 p.m., it will pivot to a vertical position.
Odysseus will track its position through a camera, matching the patterns of craters with stored maps and measuring its altitude. During the broadcast covering the landing, an Intuitive Machines spokesman said flight controllers decided to use a NASA lidar instrument to provide guidance and navigation during descent instead of a laser altimeter on the spacecraft.
Sensors will look for a safe spot, away from boulders and steep slopes.
For the last 50 feet or so of the descent, Odysseus will rely solely on its inertial measurement units, which act as the spacecraft’s inner ear, measuring the forces of acceleration. It will stop using the camera and the altitude-measuring laser to avoid being fooled by dust kicked up by the engine’s exhaust.
Intuitive Machines expects a 15-second delay after touchdown before it will be able to determine whether it is the first private company to land successfully on the moon.
It should be 6:24 p.m.Show more
Feb. 22, 2024, 5:05 p.m. ETFeb. 22, 2024Feb. 22, 2024
Michael Roston
NASA and Intuitive Machines have started a joint video stream from Houston, where the company has its headquarters. You can watch it in the video player embedded above, and watch Times journalists here for analysis of the moon landing attempt over the next 90 minutes.
Feb. 22, 2024, 4:58 p.m. ETFeb. 22, 2024Feb. 22, 2024
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
Intuitive Machines has not publicly given a reason about why it decided Odysseus needed to make an extra orbit around the moon, delaying the landing by two hours. This is pure speculation but it’s conceivable that the additional orbit would pass closer to the desired landing site, or perhaps flight controllers felt they needed more time for preparations or troubleshooting. There is no downside to waiting a little bit longer.
ADVERTISEMENTSKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Feb. 22, 2024, 4:15 p.m. ETFeb. 22, 2024Feb. 22, 2024
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
How Odysseus will take selfies while it lands.
When Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander is still about 100 feet over the surface of the moon, it will eject a small box.
That box is EagleCam, a system of cameras built by students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla. As it falls to the surface, the device will snap photos of Odysseus landing on the moon’s surface — a sort of space selfie.
If it works, it will be the first student-built project to operate on the moon.
The $350,000 project resulted from a visit to Embry-Riddle in 2019 by the chief executive of Intuitive Machines, Steve Altemus, who is an alumnus of the university.
Mr. Altemus challenged the students to build a payload “with the goal of taking the first third-person view of a spacecraft landing,” said Troy Henderson, a professor of aerospace engineering. “So that was the starting point.”
During the final descent of Odysseus on Thursday, a spring will push EagleCam away from the spacecraft, and as the instrument falls — it will track its motion but lacks any propulsion to turn or move itself — three cameras with wide fields of view will be taking pictures.
“No matter what happens, if we slide or tumble or anything like that, one of those three cameras will see the lander,” Dr. Henderson said.
Even after EagleCam hits the ground at about 25 miles per hour, it should continue taking photographs. The students performed drop tests of a model of EagleCam into a sand pit with several inches of material simulating lunar soil on top. The test version survived.
“We’re pretty confident that we’ll be OK,” Dr. Henderson said.
One key to the success of EagleCam is that Odysseus has to land in operating condition, too. The Embry-Riddle device will send the photos to the lander, which will then relay them to Earth.
It was not a simple project.
“We were in the throes of design during Covid,” said Christopher Hayes, a doctoral student who served as the lead engineer for EagleCam. “So how did we adapt to design a camera that was going to the moon while we were all on Zoom at our houses?”
The pandemic disrupted supply chains, adding more challenges. “We actually ordered a pack of screws from a company, and it came in nine months later,” Mr. Hayes recalled. “Some of our initial budgets were off.”
There was also continual turnover as students graduated. “Then we had to kind of backfill and make sure that the new students knew what they were doing,” Mr. Hayes said.
As landing approached, Mr. Hayes said he was excited and confident. “There’s a peace knowing that it’s kind of out of our hands now,” he said. “We just have to trust the system to do what it’s built to do.”
Within a few hours after landing, Mr. Hayes expects to find out how EagleCam did and, he hopes, see the photos it took.Show more
Feb. 22, 2024, 3:45 p.m. ETFeb. 22, 2024Feb. 22, 2024
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
A quick flight to the moon for Odysseus.
On Feb. 15, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket sent Odysseus on a trajectory toward the moon. The journey was short by the standards of recent lunar missions, which took more gradual, fuel efficient journeys to the moon. India’s successful Chandrayaan-3 mission traveled for more than a month, and the journey of Japan’s SLIM mission lasted more than four months before reaching the lunar surface in January.
After Odysseus separated from its rocket, it successfully turned itself on. An initial engine burn to test the propulsion system was postponed because the liquid oxygen propellant took longer to chill down than ground-based tests had predicted.
Engineers adjusted the ignition procedures, and the burn was successfully performed on Feb. 16.
Along the way, the spacecraft transmitted photographs taken of both Earth and the moon.
Flight controllers fired the engine twice more, on Feb. 18 and Feb. 20, to fine-tune the spacecraft’s path to the moon. The second effort was precise enough that the flight controllers decided to skip a planned third correction.
Odysseus is now in a circular orbit above the surface of the moon. It had been 57 miles up, but Intuitive Machines said on Thursday morning that it had raised the spacecraft’s orbit to a higher altitude, which it did not specify. Then on Thursday afternoon, it announced the spacecraft needed to take another lap around the moon before heading to the surface at a later hour.
If the company sticks to the current plan, about an hour before the scheduled landing time of 6:24 p.m. Eastern time, a final command will start the lander’s journey toward the surface.Show more
ADVERTISEMENTSKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Feb. 22, 2024, 2:54 p.m. ETFeb. 22, 2024Feb. 22, 2024
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
When will Odysseus actually land on the moon? We keep getting surprised. Intuitive Machines just shared an update that the landing time is now scheduled for 6:24 p.m. Eastern time. The company had originally said 5:49 p.m., then 5:30 p.m. Then an update this morning said it was moved up to 4:24 p.m., perhaps because the spacecraft ended up in an orbit lower than what had been planned, and was moving faster than anticipated. Now, flight controllers decided to circle the moon one additional time before landing.
Feb. 22, 2024, 2:34 p.m. ETFeb. 22, 2024Feb. 22, 2024
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
On the moon’s south pole, a quest for ice.
If you want to send astronauts to the moon, a place with water would be a good destination.
Obviously, humans need to drink water to survive, and water molecules can be split into hydrogen and oxygen. Oxygen provides air to breathe, and hydrogen and oxygen can also be used as rocket propellants to return home to Earth, or to travel somewhere else in the solar system.
But water is heavy, and lugging it from Earth is expensive and inconvenient.
The rocks brought back by NASA’s Apollo astronauts from 1969 through 1972 suggested that the moon was completely dry. But then, planetary scientists started seeing hints of water ice at the bottom of craters in the polar regions where the sun never shines. India’s first lunar orbiter, Chandrayaan-1, collected some of the data that confirmed the presence of water.
An armada of missions headed to the lunar south pole aim to measure how much water is contained in the shadowed craters and how difficult it would be to extract it. (It could be very difficult if the water molecules are trapped within minerals, rather than as ice mixed in with the soil.)
Layers of ice in the craters could also provide a history of the solar system, much like how ice cores in Greenland and Antarctica provide a record of Earth’s climate.Show more
Feb. 22, 2024, 2:00 p.m. ETFeb. 22, 2024Feb. 22, 2024
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
Why private companies are aiming for the moon.
Where you might just see gray rocks, soil and craters on the moon, entrepreneurs see profit. And whatever happens during Thursday’s landing attempt, expect more companies to race toward the moon in the years ahead.
NASA is looking to send astronauts to the moon in the coming years, and robotic spacecraft will go there first. The space agency is financing a number of commercial missions through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, or CLPS. The program is modeled on NASA’s successful effort to rely on private companies for trips to and from the International Space Station.
For NASA, buying rides on private spacecraft to take instruments and equipment to the moon is cheaper than building its own vehicles. NASA also hopes to spur a new commercial industry around the moon.
So far, however, NASA has little to show for its efforts. Some of the companies that NASA had selected to bid for CLPS missions have already gone out of business. And Astrobotic of Pittsburgh’s first CLPS flight failed on its way to the moon last month.
The dream of a delivery service to the moon is not a new one.
In 2007, the X Prize Foundation announced a competition offering a $20 million grand prize to the first nongovernment-funded business or organization that could get a spacecraft to the surface of the moon and have it successfully perform a few tasks: moving 500 meters, or 1,640 feet, to a second location, and beaming data and video back to Earth.
Eleven years later, the competition ended without any of the teams even attempting a launch. Some of the X Prize teams like Astrobotic and Ispace, the parent company of the Japanese Hakuto team, continued, believing that they could develop a profitable business without the prize money.
Among other ambitious business ideas: mining the moon for helium-3 for future fusion power plants on Earth. Rare earth metals used in electronics could also potentially be extracted from lunar soil and rocks.Show more
ADVERTISEMENTSKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Feb. 22, 2024, 1:43 p.m. ETFeb. 22, 2024Feb. 22, 2024
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
A layer of lunar protection that doubles as winter wear on Earth.
What does a winter coat have in common with a lunar lander?
For Columbia Sportswear, the apparel company with headquarters in Portland, Ore., the answer is that it makes a material used in both.
About a decade ago, the snow gear maker was inspired by the kinds of heat blankets that are wrapped around NASA spacecraft to reflect heat from the sun. But Columbia’s shiny gold-colored Omni-Heat lining does the opposite of the NASA protectors, reflecting body heat back to the wearer of the coat.
Intuitive Machines approached Columbia Sportswear to be a sponsor of the robotic lunar mission that is to land on the moon Thursday afternoon. In conversations, Intuitive Machines officials realized that Columbia made something they could use for their spacecraft. Like NASA, Intuitive Machines needed to make sure its spacecraft did not overheat when it was in bathed in sunlight. The Omni-Heat lining ended up wrapped around parts of the spacecraft’s exterior.
“It was more or less serendipitous,” Tim Boyle, the chief executive of Columbia Sportswear, said. “Hey, listen, we think we can help you guys with this thing.”
Columbia employees in Portland will gather to watch the landing. “We’ve got a full-size lunar lander in a conference room,” Mr. Boyle said. “We’re going to have a big party there. We’re going to be serving champagne and cake.”
Will Columbia start selling its lining to other spacecraft manufacturers too?
“This is sort of a new development in terms of how these technologies that we’ve developed could be used in other places,” Mr. Boyle said. “We’re pretty much an apparel company.”
But, he added: “Maybe. I don’t know.”Show more
Feb. 22, 2024, 1:20 p.m. ETFeb. 22, 2024Feb. 22, 2024
It’s not all rocket science: Jeff Koons packed sculptures aboard Odysseus.
The American artist Jeff Koons watched as a SpaceX rocket carrying 125 of his miniature moon sculptures and other cargo departed from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida last week.
“I grew up listening to President Kennedy speak about going to the moon,” Koons said in an interview before takeoff. “It gave our society a vision and drive that we could believe in ourselves and accomplish things.”
The artist said the project was inspired by his son Sean Koons, who approached him with the idea after seeing a proposal to send artworks to the moon. The project involved the digital arts and technology company NFMoon and the space exploration company 4Space, as well as support from Pace Gallery.
The moons are named after inspiring historical figures. “Leonardo da Vinci, Ada Lovelace, Plato, Billie Holiday,” Koons said, as he listed examples.Show more
ADVERTISEMENTSKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Feb. 22, 2024, 1:00 p.m. ETFeb. 22, 2024Feb. 22, 2024
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
This is the cargo being carried by the Odysseus moon lander.
The Odysseus spacecraft is hexagonal in shape with six landing legs, standing about 14 feet tall and five feet wide. For fans of “Dr. Who,” the science fiction television show, the body of the lander is roughly the size of the Tardis, the time-traveling spacecraft that, on the outside, looks like an old British police telephone booth.
NASA is the main customer for the Intuitive Machines flight, paying the company $118 million to deliver six instruments to the lunar surface. They are:
- A laser retroreflector array to bounce back laser beams fired from lunar orbit. That will act as a precise location marker for Odysseus. During the Apollo missions, astronauts left similar retroreflectors on the moon.
- A LIDAR instrument will precisely measure the spacecraft’s altitude and velocity as it descends to the surface. LIDAR is similar to radar, except that it uses laser light instead of radio waves.
- A stereo camera will capture video of the plume of dust kicked up by the lander’s engines during landing.
- A low-frequency radio receiver will measure the effects of charged particles near the lunar surface on radio signals. That will provide information that could aid the design of future radio observatories on the lunar surface.
- The Lunar Node-1 navigation beacon seeks to demonstrate an autonomous navigation system.
- The lander’s propellant tank includes a NASA instrument that uses radio waves to measure how much propellant remains in the tank.
The lander is also carrying a few other payloads, including a camera built by students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla.; a precursor instrument for a future moon telescope; and an art project by Jeff Koons.Show more
Feb. 22, 2024, 12:30 p.m. ETFeb. 22, 2024Feb. 22, 2024
Kenneth ChangReporting on moon missions.
A U.S.-built spacecraft lands on the moon for the first time in half a century.
For the first time in more than 50 years, an American spacecraft has landed on the moon.
The lander, named Odysseus, was built by Intuitive Machines of Houston. At 6:23 p.m. Eastern time the spacecraft touched the ground, making it the first privately built spacecraft to land on the lunar surface.
At first, Tim Crain, the mission director and Intuitive Machines’ chief technology officer, said it was uncertain if the spacecraft would be able to achieve its objectives, even though the spacecraft was on the moon and transmitting signals to Earth.
Still, in the face of that indeterminate outcome, Dr. Crain congratulated his colleagues in the flight control center at the company’s headquarters.
“Houston, Odysseus has found its new home,” Dr. Crain said.
Later in the evening, the company reported more promising news.
“After troubleshooting communications, flight controllers have confirmed Odysseus is upright and starting to send data,” Intuitive Machines said in a statement. “Right now, we are working to downlink the first images from the lunar surface.”
The landing site was a flat area near the Malapert A crater, about 185 miles north of the moon’s south pole. The moon’s polar regions have attracted much interest in recent years because of water ice hidden in the shadows of craters there.
Odysseus left Earth early on Feb. 15 aboard a SpaceX rocket. It pulled into lunar orbit on Wednesday. About 12 minutes before landing on Thursday, it fired its engine to begin its descent to the surface.
From this point onward in the landing sequence, Odysseus was operating completely on its own, with flight controllers at Intuitive Machines’ control center powerless to change what happened.
To accomplish the landing, Intuitive Machines had to overcome late technical issues with the flight. During the coverage of the landing, a company spokesman said a laser instrument on the spacecraft that was to provide data on its altitude and velocity was not working.
That problem explained why the spacecraft took an extra orbit around the moon, which provided two hours for changes in the spacecraft’s software that allowed the use of an experimental NASA lidar instrument on the spacecraft instead.Show more
- Share full article
- 371
ADVERTISEMENTSKIP ADVERTISEMENT
Site Index
Site Information Navigation
- NYTCo
- Contact Us
- Accessibility
- Work with us
- Advertise
- T Brand Studio
- Your Ad Choices
- Privacy Policy
- Terms of Service
- Terms of Sale
- Site Map
- Canada
- International
- Help
- Subscriptions
Enjoy unlimited access to all of The Times.
6-MONTH WELCOME OFFER
original price: $3sale price: $0.25/week
kohsarblog 
Leave a comment