Towards the Moon
If all goes according to plan, Odysseus will land near the Moon’s south pole on February 22, becoming the first private mission to land on the lunar surface.
The second American mission to the Moon this year, the IM-1 da Intuitive Machineswas launched this morning from Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The launch of the IM-1 mission, which had been postponed on Wednesday morning due to anomalies during the methane loading process, took place at the scheduled time, 01:05 (06:05 in Lisbon) from the Kennedy Space Center.
The mission takes on board Odysseus, a robotic lunar module and the Nova-C probe to the edge of the Malapert A crater, near the Moon’s south pole.
It is the second private mission launched this year to the Moon. The first, the Peregrine mission launched on January 8, ended up failing.
Robotic lunar lander
The Odysseus, equipped with a propulsion system powered by a mixture of oxygen and methane, took off inside the Falcon 9 rocket and, once in orbit, separated from the rocket and headed towards the Moon.
If Odysseus manages to land on the lunar surface, something that NASA predicts for February 22, it will also be the first North American module to land on the Moon in more than 50 years, since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
The main objective of the mission is to take six NASA payloads with instruments for research and technological testing to the south pole of the Moon, a region that remains unexplored, which will facilitate the work of the crews of future Artemis missions.
The landing will be near the Malapert massif, around 300 kilometers from the Moon’s south pole, an area “full of uncertainty”, according to NASA experts, who believe it will be composed of material from the lunar highlands, similar to the Apollo 16 landing site.
Odysseus will have about seven days to complete operations before the lunar night reaches the south pole and leaves the module without power, said Intuitive Machines, a company based in Texas (central-south).
Thanks to the module’s payload, the North American aerospace agency will be able to study space weather and lunar surface interactions and test landing technologies accuracy for future autonomous navigation systems.
Both Peregrine and Odysseus Peregrine were developed within the framework of programa Commercial Lunar Payload Services da NASAwith which it hires aerospace companies to send tests to Earth’s satellite.
2024-02-15 09:59:17
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