ORLANDO, Fla. — A industrial firm’s lunar lander launched from Kennedy Space Center final week efficiently made it into the moon’s orbit on Wednesday forward of its Thursday try to stay the touchdown.
Houston-based Intuitive Machines posted on social media that its Nova-C lander named Odysseus, which blasted off from KSC on Feb. 15 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9, had carried out a 408-second fundamental engine burn that put it right into a profitable lunar orbit of an altitude of about 57 miles.
“Odysseus is now closer to the moon than the end-to-end distance driving across Space City, Houston, TX,” the corporate posted on X, noting it had already traveled greater than 620,000 miles within the final seven days.
The spacecraft will stay in orbit whereas flight controllers analyze flight knowledge and transmit pictures again to Earth, the corporate mentioned.
Elon Musk chimed in to say, “Congrats!” to which the corporate replied, “Thanks for the TLI throw!”
Earlier this week, the corporate posted pictures from Odysseus’ journey to the moon displaying Earth within the background. Its journey to the moon has been extra profitable than fellow industrial firm Astrobotic Technology’s try that launched in January, which suffered a propellant leak that pressured the corporate to ship its Peregrine lunar lander again to Earth to dissipate on reentry.
The Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines launches have been the primary two underneath NASA’s Commercial Lunar Lander Services (CLPS) program, an effort by NASA to encourage personal corporations to succeed so NASA might develop into a buyer for future provide and science missions versus operating the entire mission. It has seven extra CLPS contracts slated to date together with as much as three extra this yr.
NASA paid Intuitive Machines $118 million for the mission, and Odysseus is carrying six NASA science payloads value about $12 million in addition to one other six payloads the corporate organized by itself.
The payloads will assist NASA’s efforts to finally convey human missions to the moon’s south pole as properly, at present the aim of the Artemis III mission as early as September 2026.
The exhausting a part of touchdown on the moon efficiently, although, continues to be to return. The firm is concentrating on dropping to about 6 miles altitude with one other burn on the far aspect of the moon after which attempt to contact down on the moon’s south pole at 5:49 p.m. EST Thursday.
The firm plans to stream its touchdown try on the corporate web site at intuitivemachines.com/im-1 and on its X account at X.com/Int_Machines/ and NASA may even host the stream on its social media shops like youtube.com/@NASA/ at NASA TV with protection starting at 4 p.m.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”