Moon: Mission that seeks unprecedented landing has first images – 02/18/2024 – Science

The IM-1 mission, which attempts to carry out the first landing by a private company on the Moon this week, released its first images. Transmitted on Friday (16), the day after the launch, the records were made shortly after the Odysseus module separated from the second stage of SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

In the images, it is possible to see the Earth in the background and part of the Nova-C model module.

Since the vehicle left the Kennedy Space Center in Florida (United States), Intuitive Machines has provided updates on IM-1, its debut flight. In general, the mission takes place on schedule and the expectation is that the landing can be carried out this week.

The company made the reservation, however, that delays and interruptions in communication are to be expected on lunar missions.

After leaving its launcher behind, the module autonomously activated all sensors and radio. Initially, according to the company, the module had a low rotation rate, causing its solar panels and antennas to rotate outside the desired attitude.

The team on Earth managed to perform a maneuver to correct the problem, leaving Odysseus with its batteries fully charged.

There was also a need to postpone the fuel burn by one day due to the intermittent transmission of data to the team on Earth, impacting the collection of information to support the first in-space ignition of the liquid methane and oxygen engine.

This engine firing was later done, but flight controllers still need to analyze the data, collected more than 270,000 kilometers from Earth.

IM-1 is expected to arrive at the Malapert A crater next Thursday (22). This region, at the lunar south pole, is one of the candidates to receive Artemis 3, scheduled for September 2026 and with which the American agency hopes to see humans walking on the satellite again.

If all goes well, IM-1 will be the first private mission to make a soft landing on the Moon and also the first US landing since the last Apollo mission, half a century ago.

INTUITIVE MACHINES ‘CARRETO’

The Odysseus module weighs 675 kilograms and carries six NASA payloads, as part of an agency program to promote commercial lunar trailer missions. For transporting its instruments to the lunar surface, it paid Intuitive Machines US$118 million.

They are alongside other cargo dispatched by private entities, ranging from thermal covers to sculptures, passing through a camera to be ejected and photograph the landing in perspective.

NASA’s instruments are made up of a radio system that will measure astronomical sources and the plasma environment in the lunar exosphere (the ultra-tenuous, practically zero atmosphere of the satellite), a retroreflector (passive instrument for measuring the distance to the Moon with a laser) , a device to measure speed and distance from the ground, a stereo camera to observe effects of the propellant plume on the ground during landing, a radio relay for location, and an available fuel gauge.