HOUSTON – Intuitive Machines’ Moon lander carrying NASA science is quickly approaching a high-risk attempt to land on the lunar South Pole, which could mark the first private mission to touch down on the Moon.
The landing attempt on Thursday evening comes just nine days after SpaceX launched the Nova-C spacecraft known as Odysseus from Kennedy Space Center in Florida and weeks after Astrobotic’s foiled attempt to send a robotic mission to the Moon. Both American companies have contracts to fly NASA lunar science as part of the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.
LUNAR LANDER CAPTURES STUNNING PHOTOS OF EARTH BEFORE MOON LANDING ATTEMPT
Intuitive Machines’ mission, known as IM-1, is set to deliver six NASA science payloads and commercial technologies to the lunar South Pole region known as Malapert. The hexagonal-shaped lander is about the size of the British phone box made famous as the time-traveling Tardis in the “Dr. Who” science-fiction series.
A lunar landing is an engineering challenge only five nations have completed, and no private company has ever successfully landed on the Moon. If successful, this will mark the first private Moon landing and the first American landing since Apollo 17.
A day before the landing attempt, Intuitive Machines completed the lunar orbit insertion burn, placing it in a circular orbit about 52 miles above the Moon.
Flight controllers continue to get flight data, including photos of the Moon. Intuitive Machines plans to share more images as the spacecraft approaches the Moon.
Each time Odysseus orbits the Moon, Intuitive Machines’ mission control in Houston will have about 75 minutes of communication with the spacecraft and then a 45-minute expected blackout.
The spacecraft will continue to lower its orbit by using Terrain Relative Navigation to guide itself to the landing area. Odysseus must slow from about 4,000 mph to a soft landing on the Moon at about one-meter-per-second velocity.
The soft touchdown on the lunar surface is expected on Thursday at 5:49 p.m. ET. Flight controllers expect about a 15-second delay before they can confirm the landing.
Intuitive Machines and NASA plan to livestream the landing attempt beginning at 4:15 p.m. ET. The landing will stream live on X (formerly Twitter), NASA.gov, NASA TV and NASA+.
The Odysseus target landing area is about 186 miles from the lunar South Pole in an area known as Malapert, named after the 17th-century Belgian astronomer Charles Malapert. The area is near the lunar mountain Malapert Massif, one of NASA’s lunar landing candidate sites for the Artemis III astronaut mission.
NASA and the private space industry want to visit the Moon’s South Pole because it likely contains water ice, which can be mined for fuel and other resources, instead of launching those supplies to the Moon.
If the landing is successful, Intuitive Machines expects to provide power for its payloads for about a week before lunar night sets on the South Pole.