A robotic spacecraft entered lunar orbit Wednesday, setting up a historic landing scheduled for early evening Thursday when an American spacecraft would touch down on the lunar surface for the first time in more than 50 years.
The mission is being carried out under a $118 million contract with NASA, which is paying the company to deliver six scientific and technological payloads to the moon. Intuitive Machines’ 14-foot-tall Nova-C lander, dubbed Odysseus, is one of several robotic spacecraft being developed by the private sector that NASA hopes will land on the moon in the coming years, helping the space agency to eventually land astronauts there as part of its Artemis program.
Unlike the Apollo program, which sent astronauts to the equatorial regions of the moon, Artemis is aiming to land at the lunar south pole, an unexplored yet potentially fruitful region where there is water, in the form of ice, in its permanently shadowed craters. Odysseus’s landing spot is in that area near a crater called Malapert A, named for a 17th-century Belgian astronomer, that is one of the landing sites under consideration for the Artemis program.
Entering lunar orbit was a major milestone for Intuitive Machines — one that came six days after the craft lifted off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
“Over the next day, while the lander remains in lunar orbit, flight controllers will analyze the complete flight data and transmit imagery of the moon,” Intuitive Machines said in a post on X.
Landing, however, is a significant challenge. Last month, another commercial space company, Astrobotic, tried but failed to reach the moon when its spacecraft suffered an engine problem, resulting in a fuel leak. It has said it will try again, perhaps as early as this year.
As it flies around the far side of the moon, Odysseus will lose contact with the ground for about 45 minutes. Each pass will also present a challenge for the spacecraft as it alternates between the direct heat of the sun and the cold darkness behind the moon, which will require “heat drawn from batteries to keep its system warm,” according to the company.
As the vehicle begins its descent toward the surface, it will fire its engine to drop from 62 miles to just over six miles. Then its cameras and lasers will feed data to onboard navigation computers that will autonomously guide it to a safe place on the surface. At about 100 feet, it will flip itself to a vertical position with its landing legs pointed down. During the descent, the engine thrust will continuously decrease as the lander burns fuel and, as a result, gets lighter and lighter.
Odysseus also is carrying a NASA instrument designed to capture images of the dust plume kicked up by the spacecraft’s engines. Since the space agency anticipates eventually landing multiple spacecraft close to one another, it wants to better understand what effects landings have on the moon’s surface and environment.
