After achieving a successful landing on the surface of the moon as the first probe to succeed in this mission, the “Odysseus” probe of “Intuitive Machines” sent its first images of the Malabert crater, in the far south of the moon, where it showed lunar dust.
Published on: 02/27/2024 – 17:46
2 minutes
“Odysseus continues to communicate with Nova Control flight path controllers from the surface of the moon,” Intuitive Machines said Monday. The company published two photos on the X platform, one of the spacecraft landing and the other taken 35 seconds after it turned on one side.
Images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera team confirmed Odysseus completed its landing at 80.13°S and 1.44°E at a 2579 m elevation. After traveling more than 600,000 miles, Odysseus landed within 1.5 km of its intended Malapert A landing site, using a contingent… pic.twitter.com/CaMSSO4Gfb
— Intuitive Machines (@Int_Machines) February 26, 2024
The vehicle transports, in particular, scientific instruments from NASA, which wants to explore the south pole of the moon before sending its astronauts there, as part of the Artemis missions. The US Space Agency decided to entrust this service to private companies, allowing them to conduct similar flights more frequently and for less money. But it would also stimulate the development of a lunar economy, capable of supporting a permanent human presence on the Moon, which is one of the goals of the Artemis program. One of these devices is supposed to study the lunar plasma (a layer of electrically charged gas) and measure radio waves coming from the Sun and other planets.
The Odysseus vehicle, which uses solar panels, is now supposed to work for approximately seven days from the first day of the probe’s landing on the moon’s surface, before nightfall on the moon’s south pole.
The vehicle, which is more than four meters high, landed on the surface of the moon on Thursday, in a precedent in the United States for more than 50 years, and it is also a first of its kind for a private company. US President Joe Biden welcomed this achievement, saying that this event inaugurates a “new era of space exploration,” with the expected return of astronauts to the moon.
