After the 1st landing on the Moon, Intuitive Machines is already preparing another – 02/29/2024 – Science

Intuitive Machines and its customers in space cargo transport hope that the company emerges stronger from the problems experienced in its first mission to the Moon, with improvements already planned for the next trip.

The lunar probe Odysseus approaches this Thursday (29) the end of a week-long mission near the lunar south pole, after a series of successes and failures that illustrated the risks that the company and NASA, its biggest supporter of the mission, they had to overcome.

The American agency estimates that, by supporting a series of private, low-budget missions to the Moon, it will encourage projects that take astronauts to the Earth’s satellite this decade. The plan has financial space to cover failures and offers companies great incentives to succeed with little investment.

“It’s a new way to go to the Moon, eventually to Mars, and it’s a new Moon that we’re going to,” said NASA chief Bill Nelson in an interview, classifying the Intuitive Machines mission as an example of success. . “We’re not going to a permanently lit, flatter region at the equator, like Apollo. We’re going to a dangerous, dark region with lots of holes.”

The company’s probe tipped over after a series of failures. There was a need, for example, for a last-minute workaround for a laser that told the machine where the surface was. NASA and commercial mission participants were able to communicate with the instruments, but they did not collect all the expected data.

While some experiments were disappointing, such as a camera developed by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University that never worked as expected in space, others were successful.

Lonestar Data Holdings, a Houston-based startup that develops space data centers, placed a small server aboard the lander to test data transmission between the Earth and the Moon.

“We achieved everything we needed from the mission and we are incredibly happy,” said Lonestar Chief Executive Chris Stott. The company has already reserved space on the next Intuitive Machines flight, later this year.

That mission, called IM-2, is exhausted and a third is being planned.

The chief executive of Intuitive Machines, Steve Altemus, said this Wednesday (28) that, since landing, the European Space Agency (ESA) has expressed interest in flying on one of the company’s missions.

Altemus said some errors indicate improvements to be made to IM-2. The mission’s most egregious error was the fact that they forgot to turn off a safety switch that prevented the landing laser from working. He also stated that the IM-1 team has gotten better at anticipating potential problems and alternative solutions.

Part of the mission’s success was the fact that, compared to past space budgets, the project was a bargain. NASA invested US$118 million in the Intuitive Machines mission, while the company paid almost US$100 million.