A potentially new frontier of lunar exploration began at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the wee hours of the morning. Intuitive Machines’ robotic Odysseus lunar lander successfully launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on February 15 at 1:05 a.m. EST. The uncrewed lander was successfully separated from the rocket about an hour after launch, beginning its 230,000-mile journey towards the moon.
If the mission goes as planned, Odysseus will land on the moon on February 22, where it would be the first private spacecraft to conduct a successful lunar landing. Only government-funded programs from Russia, China, India, the United States, and most recently Japan have performed a lunar landing.
[Related: This private lander could be the first US machine on the moon this century.]
“It is a profoundly humbling moment for all of us at Intuitive Machines,” the company’s vice president of space systems Trent Martin said during a pre-launch press conference. “The opportunity to return the United States to the moon for the first time since 1972 demands a hunger to explore, and that’s at the heart of everyone at Intuitive Machines.”
The spacecraft is a hexagonal cylinder with six landing legs and is roughly 14 feet tall and five feet wide. Intuitive Machines calls the spacecraft design Nova-C and notes that it’s about the size of a classic red London telephone booth. When fully loaded with fuel, it weighs about 4,200 pounds.
The lander is aiming to touch down 186 miles away from the moon’s south pole. This region has cliffs, craters, and possibly frozen water. NASA is the main sponsor of the mission, paying Intuitive Machines about $118 million to deliver its payload to the moon. NASA hopes that if this mission is successful it will jumpstart the lunar economy ahead of future crewed missions. The space agency plans to land astronauts there
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