The U.S. private unmanned probe ‘Odysseus’, which landed near the South Pole of the Moon at 8:23 a.m. on the 23rd (6:23 p.m. on the 22nd, Eastern Time), “appears to have fallen on its side and lies down,” the probe said. The manufacturer, Intuitive Machines (IM), a space company based in Houston, Texas, USA, made the final announcement. IM initially announced that Odysseus had “landed upright and is transmitting data.”
Steve Altimus, CEO of Intuitive Machines, an American private space company, explained how the company’s unmanned lunar lander Nova-C, named ‘Odysseus’, fell sideways after landing at a press conference held at its headquarters in Houston, Texas on the 23rd. I am doing it./AP Yonhap News
Odysseus is a Nova-C class unmanned lunar lander manufactured by IM, with a height of 4.3 m and a diameter of 1.6 m. “It appears that the landing gear caught on the surface and caused the lander to tip over as it landed at a higher speed than planned,” said Steve Altimus, IM CEO.
Odysseus is the first American spacecraft to land on the moon 51 years after Apollo 17 in December 1972. IM said that the Odysseus lander was supposed to slow down its descent to 1 meter per second, but it appears to have descended at 3 meters per second. As a result, the landing gear may trip over the surface as it continues to move horizontally during descent even after landing, or the landing gear may be damaged due to the high landing speed.
Fortunately, there are predictions that the six scientific and experimental equipment that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) requested IM to transport to the moon will be able to carry out the planned mission to some extent by being mounted on the upper part of the fallen Odysseus fuselage.
The brand logo of American sportswear company Columbia is clearly stamped on the golden fuselage of the Odysseus lander that fell on its side. Even if Odysseus’s current mission is a ‘failure’ or a ‘half success’, it is profitable for Columbia. This is because whenever Odysseus is reported, the Columbia logo on the fuselage keeps appearing.
An image of IM’s unmanned lunar lander Nova-C (Odysseus) landing on the moon. Sportswear Columbia’s logo and golden insulation are visible./NASA Intuitive Machines
In addition, the Nova-C unmanned lunar lander produced by IM will continue to fly to the moon equipped with NASA’s lunar exploration science and experiment equipment. NASA and IM signed a $118 million Civil Lunar Cargo Service (CLPS) contract in 2019. Therefore, the Columbia logo will continue to be exposed on the fuselage of the lunar lander sent by IM in the future.
However, the Columbia logo was not intended only for advertising effect. Odysseus must carry out its mission in extreme lunar temperatures, which soar to 127 °C on the surface directly exposed to sunlight, but drop to -173 °C on the other side. So Omni-Heat Infinity, an insulating material developed by Columbia, was used to cover the fuselage and fuel tank of Odysseus.
Initially, IM offered to attach a logo to Odysseus if Columbia provided funds. However, Columbia decided that the shiny golden ‘Omni-Heat’, the lining of its ski jacket, was suitable for the lunar environment and recommended IM to use its own insulating material.
Haskell Beckham, vice president of innovation at Columbia, who developed Omni-Heat as an insulating material for clothing, said the insulating material was originally invented at NASA’s Marshall Space Center in 1964 for the Apollo lunar exploration program, and was later applied to the company’s winter outdoor jackets. It was revealed that it was done and then returned to space.
Winter clothing lining insulation from Columbia Sportswear. Columbia stated that it is basically the same material as that covering the fuselage of the unmanned lunar lander Odysseus./Columbia
In other words, although the design was different depending on the mission and work environment of the probe, it is basically the same material as the insulating lining of the company’s clothing worn in the winter. The only difference is that while on Earth it reflects body heat and achieves a warming effect, the insulation covering Odysseus reflects solar heat. Columbia also announced that Omni-Heat passed all tests under various extreme conditions, as volatile substances generated from the insulation should not condense on the probe’s optical equipment.
In fact, from its inception, NASA has been careful not to promote specific companies or products in space. Since 2019, the International Space Station (ISS), which orbits the Earth at an altitude of 400 km, has been actively opened to space tourists and the policy has shifted to commercializing low-Earth orbit. However, to this day, the only brand that has produced advertisements on the ISS is toy manufacturer Mattel’s Barbie doll. , Estee Lauder cosmetics, and sportswear Adidas.
In April 2022, two female astronaut Barbie dolls are floating against the background of the cupola window overlooking the Earth within the International Space Station (ISS) orbiting low Earth at an altitude of 400 km./NASA
However, as NASA began cooperating with private space companies to develop space, the ‘space marketing era’ in which brand logos were attached to private spacecraft was widely opened.
As a private space company, there is a high probability that spacecraft or rockets developed with enormous capital will continue to fail, so funding is always needed. On the other hand, there is no ‘blank space’ more attractive than ‘space’ for consumer goods companies to achieve promotional effects. So companies often pay millions of dollars to place their logos on private spacecraft.
For example, Japanese brand logos such as Japan Airlines, Suzuki, and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) were attached to the fuselage of Japanese private space company Ispace’s Hakuto-R lunar lander, which crashed during the lunar landing in April last year. Every time a Hakuto-R report came out, these logos were exposed.
Russia has been more active in attracting profitable corporate advertising. A huge Pizza Hut advertisement was attached to the Russian Proton rocket that launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in November 1999.
A Russian Proton-K rocket with a large Pizza Hut logo attached. /Roscosmos
Pizza Hut originally tried to make the Pizza Hut logo visible from Earth by shooting a laser beam at the moon. However, he gave up after hearing from experts that in order for the Pizza Hut logo shot on the moon to be visible from Earth, the area to be projected by the laser beam would have to be the size of Texas, and that it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars. It was reported that around $1 million was spent on advertising the fuselage of the Proton rocket at the time.
Meanwhile, NASA has so far manufactured all spacecraft involved in lunar exploration. Since we were using tax money, we could not allow for even the slightest error or failure. However, prior to the landing of astronauts at the lunar South Pole and full-scale exploration in the fall of 2026, development costs of hundreds of millions to $1 billion were expected just for the development of an unmanned lander that would send scientific and measurement equipment to the lunar South Pole in advance, and there were concerns that the production period would be infinitely long.
Ultimately, NASA established a policy in 2019 to send lunar scientific exploration equipment to the moon using unmanned lunar landers developed by private space companies. Afterwards, a $2.6 billion ‘Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS)’ contract was signed with several U.S. private space companies, including Astrobotic Technologies, Deep Space Systems, Firefly Aerospace, and Intuitive Machines. .
Through CLPS, NASA plans to further revitalize the U.S. private space industry and actively utilize the creativity of the private sector.
Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar probe, which burned up after returning to Earth’s atmosphere due to a fuel leak while carrying NASA’s scientific equipment last month, and IM’s Odysseus, which successfully landed this time but fell sideways, were all manufactured under this CLPS contract. These are private lunar probes.
