SpaceX launches Intuitive Machines’ private ‘Odysseus’ Moon lander

SpaceX launches Intuitive Machines’ private ‘Odysseus’ Moon lander

Subject: Science and tech

Section: Space tech

Context:

• SpaceX launched Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 mission, which could be the first private moon lander to make a lunar soft landing if it succeeds.

More on news:

• It will become the first American spacecraft to gently set down the moon’s surface since Apollo 17 moon landing in 1972.
• It will become the first private effort to reach the surface of the moon in one piece.
• Before it , three earlier events by an American company , Japanese company , and an Israeli non profit have failed.
• The launch of the Intuitive Machines mission comes just one month after another American company, Astrobotic Technology of Pittsburgh, attempted to send Peregrine, its lander, to the moon.

Why is it called Odysseus:

• This particular spacecraft was named Odysseus after a contest among employees of Intuitive Machines of Houston- the company incharge of the mission.
• Mario Romero, the engineer who proposed the name, said the travels of the hero of the “Odyssey,” the ancient Greek epic poem, provided an apt analogy for the lunar mission.

Significance of the mission:

• If private companies can pull off this feat, at a much lower cost than its traditional NASA mission, it will open the door for much wider exploration of the moon and commercial endeavors.
• Intuitive Machines is aiming to become the first to land a commercially built spacecraft on the lunar surface.
• Intuitive Machines calls its spacecraft design Nova-C. 
• It is a hexagonal cylinder with six landing legs, about 14 feet tall and 5 feet wide.
• Intuitive Machines notes that the body of the lander is roughly the size of an old British police telephone booth.
• If successful, it would also be the first moon landing for the U.S. in more than 50 years.
• NASA is the primary customer for this mission, paying Intuitive Machines $118 million to take its payloads, which include a stereo camera to observe the plume of dust kicked up during landing and a radio receiver to measure the effects of charged particles on radio signals, to the moon’s surface.
• Odysseus is expected to touch down near the moon’s south pole, a region that has long been intriguing for scientists because water ice is thought to be relatively abundant within craters.
• Both Odysseus and Peregrine are part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, or CLPS.
• The object of the program is to use commercial companies to send experiments to the moon rather than NASA building and operating its own moon landers.
• Astrobotic Technology and Intuitive Machines are part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which aims to spur development of moon landers by private-sector companies that NASA could eventually hire to transport cargo and scientific instruments to the lunar surface.
• NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program is part of the agency’s Artemis program, which seeks to return astronauts to the moon over the next few years.
• NASA recently announced delays in a pair of coming Artemis missions, pushing a lunar fly-around that was to launch later this year to 2025 and postponing the first Artemis landing attempt to the following year.