The first private lander landed on the Moon a few hours ago. It is Odysseus, from the Texan company Intuitive Machine: an absolute first in the history of the space age, as well as the return of an American vehicle to the Moon 52 years after the last ‘Apollo’ mission. Launched on February 15th, Odysseus entered lunar orbit on February 21st. In the night the moon landing in a crater near a 5 km high mountain complex known as Malapert. It is the southernmost point on the Moon ever visited by a spacecraft.
This is when NASA announced that the Odysseus probe had landed on the Moon, the first American probe to do so in 50 years. pic.twitter.com/wj09Nr9UlP
— Daniele Angrisani (@putino) February 22, 2024
It wasn’t a walk in the park
The American commercial spacecraft Odysseus is therefore on the Moon more than half a century after the end of the famous “Apollo” program which brought man to the satellite. It is not entirely clear what conditions it is in: the first signal it sent to the headquarters of the private company Intuitive Machines which designed it and sent it into space with NASA funding, arrived late and weak.
At 2.25am, the company tweeted: “After resolving communications issues, flight controllers have confirmed that Odysseus is upright and starting to send data.” It wasn’t a walk in the park. The engineers managing the flight and landing faced significant navigation problems, and mission control had great difficulty communicating with the craft after its arrival. “Odie”, as they nicknamed her, succeeded in the feat a month after the failure of a previous US mission of the same type.
What Odysseus will do on the Moon
What will it be used for, concretely? The goal of Odysseus is to study the lunar environment of the Moon’s south pole as part of NASA’s plan to bring a crewed mission there at the end of 2026. The spacecraft, just over 4 meters high, carries scientific instruments
Odysseus lifted off from Florida last week and entered lunar orbit on Wednesday. The much-feared moon landing lasted about an hour: the lasers that were supposed to allow autonomous driving did not activate, but the Intuitive Machines teams used a NASA instrument that had only been on board on an experimental basis and later proved to be essential . About ten minutes before the moment of touching the lunar surface, the spacecraft’s travel was slowed down for the final descent, vertically from 30 meters above sea level. At that stage, the device was completely autonomous. An instrument equipped with cameras, sent outside the spacecraft, filmed the great moment, until Odysseus’ six feet touched the satellite’s ground.
“Private” Moon
If today’s moon landing is the first in 52 years for the United States (after the end of the Apollo program in 1972), India and Japan have recently managed to land on the Moon, becoming respectively the fourth and fifth countries to do so, after the Soviet Union , USA and China.
The private companies that have tried, from Israel, Japan and the USA, have not yet succeeded in the undertaking and Russia also failed in an attempt last summer. The place identified by Intuitive Machines to act as a landing strip for its Odie is located about 300 kilometers from the south pole of the Moon, considered interesting because there is frozen water there, a usable deposit.
NASA would like to send a crew there starting from 2026 with the Artemis missions. To prepare for such missions, it invented this CLPS program, Commercial Lunar Payload Services: instead of directly developing spacecraft for the Moon, the American space agency commissioned private companies to transport its scientific instruments. This reduces costs for the state agency and allows for more frequent trips.
How long will we have to wait for man to return to the Moon
No one has set foot on the Moon since 1972, when Eugene Cernan, the 11th man to land there, wrote his daughter Tracy’s initials on the regolith with his finger before returning home. Now there is a lot of talk about a return, but the difficulties are many, more than expected. NASA astronauts will not be able to go there until at least 2026. The Artemis III mission has been delayed by at least a year.
The agency does not yet have a tested capsule to take astronauts to lunar soil, or suitable spacesuits. It will take a long, long time. NASA has also postponed the Artemis II mission to 2025 will see four astronauts fly around the Moon without actually landing. For now, we will make do with the poetry of Tracy’s initials as our last mark on thethe only natural satellite of the Earth.