An American company created history by being the first commercial company to land a spacecraft on the Moon.
Houston-based Intuitive Machines landed its Odysseus robot near the moon’s south pole.
Controllers took a few minutes to determine that the craft had landed, but they eventually received a signal.
“What we can confirm, without a doubt, is our equipment is on the surface of the Moon and we are transmitting,” flight director Tim Crain announced.
The company’s employees cheered and clapped in response to the announcement.
This moment marked a watershed not just for commercial space exploration but also for the entire US space program.
‘Intuitive Machines’ has put an end to the United States’ 50-year absence from the moon’s surface. One must go back to the final Apollo mission in 1972 to find an instance where American hardware gently nestled in the lunar soil.
Nasa, the US space agency, secured space on Odysseus for six scientific instruments. Nasa administrator Bill Nelson quickly congratulated Intuitive Machines on what he described as a “triumph,” expressing his satisfaction with the mission.
“The US has returned to the Moon,” he told reporters. “Today, for the first time in the history of humanity, a commercial company – an American company – launched and led the voyage up there. And today is the day that shows the power and promise of Nasa’s commercial partnerships.”
Even before the descent began, a technical issue that threatened the mission confronted controllers.
Odysseus’ ranging lasers, designed to calculate the craft’s altitude and velocity, were not functioning properly.
Fortunately, experimental lasers from NASA on board were available, and engineers were able to connect them to the navigation computers.
At 23:23 GMT, Odysseus touched down. The robot initially produced no signal. Nerves were plentiful as the minutes passed, but eventually, engineers established a communications link, albeit a weak one.
This raised concerns about the lander’s status. Within a few hours, Intuitive Machines reported that Odysseus was standing up and sending back data, including pictures.
The spacecraft aimed to land on a cratered terrain next to the 5-kilometer-tall Malapert mountain complex, marking the most southern point ever visited by a spacecraft on the Moon at 80 degrees South.
NASA may consider sending astronauts to this location later this decade as part of the Artemis program.
Deep craters in this region, never exposed to sunlight and perennially in shadow, may contain trapped frozen water, according to scientists.
“The ice is really important because if we can actually take advantage of that ice on the surface of the Moon, that’s less materials we have to bring with us,” explained Lori Glaze, Nasa’s director of planetary science.
“We could use that ice to convert it to water – drinkable drinking water – and we can extract oxygen and hydrogen for fuel and for breathing for the astronauts. So, it really helps us in human exploration.”
NASA’s six payloads on board Odysseus consist of a mix of technology demonstrations and science.
A key investigation, which the agency’s scientists are conducting, will examine the behavior of lunar dust, a major nuisance discovered by the Apollo astronauts. The dust was found to scratch and clog their equipment.
The scientists aim to gain a better understanding of how landing craft kick up dust, causing it to hang just above the surface before settling back down.
The six commercial payloads on board include an Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University student camera system that was supposed to be deployed from Odysseus while it was still 30 meters above the lunar surface.
This system was designed to capture selfies as the robot landed.
Jeff Koons, an American artist, has also attached a box to the side of the lander containing 125 small stainless steel balls representing the Moon’s various phases over the course of a month.
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