A robotic spacecraft made history Thursday by becoming the first civilian spacecraft to land on the moon and the first U.S. vehicle to accomplish the feat in more than 50 years.
The lander, built by Intuitive Machines, touched down on the moon around 6:23 p.m. ET after overcoming a late-stage malfunction with its onboard laser equipment. The Nova-C lander, nicknamed Odysseus, was the first American spacecraft to reach the moon’s surface since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
“Houston, Odysseus has found a new home,” Tim Crane, the company’s chief technology officer, radioed back from the control room as employees cheered and celebrated.
It took several minutes to confirm the landing. As expected, mission controllers lost contact with the spacecraft as it made its final descent.
The company said it was able to detect a weak signal from one of Odysseus’ antennas, but needed more data to determine how the spacecraft landed and in what conditions. About two hours later, the team received good news.
“After troubleshooting communications, flight controllers confirmed that Odysseus was upright and beginning to transmit data,” Intuitive Machines said. mentioned in the X update. “Currently, we are working on downlinking the first images from the lunar surface.”
Intuitive Machines CEO Stephen Altemus called the landing an “outstanding effort” and praised the entire team. “I know this was a blow, but we’re on the ground and communicating. Welcome to the moon,” Artemus said.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson also congratulated Intuitive Machines on their landing, calling the milestone a “victory.”
“Odysseus took the moon,” Nelson said in a video message played during a live broadcast of the event. “This feat is a huge step forward for all humanity.”
Odysseus was launched into space on February 15th aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The 14-foot-tall lander then traveled more than 620,000 miles over six days to reach the moon.
The landing time was adjusted several times on Thursday as Intuitive Machines adjusted the spacecraft’s orbit around the moon.
When Odysseus descended to the moon’s surface, he targeted a landing site near a crater called Malapart A, near the moon’s south pole. The moon’s south polar region has long intrigued scientists because water ice is thought to be relatively abundant in the region’s permanently shadowed craters. .
Odysseus travels with a combination of commercial cargo and NASA scientific equipment. The lander is expected to spend about a week collecting data on the lunar surface before lunar night begins and the spacecraft powers down.
About an hour before landing, the company also scrambled to resolve a problem with its laser equipment, which is designed to help the rover assess the lunar surface terrain and find a safe, non-hazardous landing site. . Odysseus’s laser rangefinder was inoperable, but a sensor from NASA’s scientific instruments aboard the lander was reused.
The mission is part of the Commercial Lunar Landing Services Program, established by NASA to help private companies develop lunar landers. NASA will eventually hire these companies to transport cargo and scientific equipment to the moon’s surface as part of the agency’s broader ambitions to return astronauts to the moon.
NASA awarded Intuitive Machines $118 million to perform the moon landing.
Last month, another company tried unsuccessfully to send a lander to the moon under the same NASA program. The spacecraft, built by Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology, suffered a catastrophic failure shortly after launch, forcing the company to abort the entire mission.
In addition to being the first commercial spacecraft on the moon, Odysseus also joined an elite club. To date, only the space agencies of the United States, the former Soviet Union, China, India, and Japan have successfully made a controlled or “soft landing” on the moon. Moon.
Source: www.nbcnews.com
