Space travel
Odysseus, the American lunar lander that was launched on Thursday, has transmitted images from space for the first time.
The four images shared by the American company Intuitive Machines include an image of the lunar lander, which also shows the Earth. “The images were taken shortly after the release of the SpaceX rocket,” the company that owns it wrote on X.
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The Odysseus lunar lander was launched Thursday from Cape Canaveral, using SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. Odysseus did not wait until he arrived on the moon, perhaps on February 22, to make images.
It would be the first – albeit unmanned – American moon landing since the Apollo missions more than fifty years ago. This is the first commercial landing on the moon in the history of space travel. So far, only government organizations have succeeded.
The project is part of NASA’s so-called Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS). With this moon program, the space agency wants to collect as much knowledge as possible relatively cheaply by working with private companies.
Phone booth
Odysseus is about the same size as a traditional British telephone box, has aluminum legs, weighs about 700 kilograms and can carry a load of about 130 kilograms. A large part of this is research material from NASA, another part is taken up by the projects of commercial companies.
The lunar lander will conduct research at a crater on the moon. Astronauts may also be sent there in the future. The last time humans walked on the moon was about half a century ago in 1972.
