KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — Intuitive Machines says its first lunar lander is ready for launch this week after completing a final series of tests on the launch pad.
In a statement late Feb. 12, the company confirmed that its Nova-C lander, named Odysseus, is ready to launch on the IM-1 mission. The spacecraft will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 scheduled to lift off at 12:57 a.m. Eastern Feb. 14 from Launch Complex 39A here, with backup launch opportunities Feb. 15 and 16.
That confirmation came after the company performed two fueling tests, called wet dress rehearsals, of the lander while encapsulated atop the Falcon 9 on the launch pad. Those tests, on Feb. 8 and 10, were designed to confirm that the lander can be loaded with liquid oxygen (LOX) and methane propellants in the hours before liftoff.
“Everything is great. Everything is good to go,” Trent Martin, vice president of space systems at Intuitive Machines, said in a Feb. 12 interview.
He said the company tweaked the parameters for loading the 1,200 kilograms of propellant onto the lander after the first test, but added that both tests went well. “On both days we did the wet dress, we would have been go for launch.”
The IM-1 mission is carrying six NASA payloads through the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program as well as six commercial payloads. A launch this week would set up a landing attempt Feb. 22 near the Malapert A crater in the south polar region of the moon.
If successful, IM-1 would be the first non-government mission to land on the moon after failed attempts by Israel’s Beresheet lander in 2019, the HAKUTO-R M1 lander by Japan’s ispace in April 2023 and Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander in January. Success rates for robotic lander missions overall, both government and private, have been below 50%.
“Space is a hard business. Landing on the moon is even harder business as we’ve learned over the last four or five years,” Martin…
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