A lunar lander built by Houston-based aerospace company Intuitive Machines launched from Florida early Thursday on a mission to perform the first U.S. moon landing in more than half a century and the first by a privately owned spacecraft.
The Nova-C lander, nicknamed Odysseus, lifted off shortly after 1 a.m. EST atop a Falcon 9 rocket flown by Elon Musk’s. SpaceX from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.
A live Nasa-SpaceX online video feed showed the 25-story rocket roaring off the launch pad in two stages and streaking into the dark sky over Florida’s Atlantic coast, followed by a fiery yellow plume of exhaust.
The launch, previously set for Wednesday morning, was delayed for 24 hours due to abnormal temperatures observed in liquid methane used in the lander’s propulsion system. SpaceX said the problem was later fixed.
Although considered an Intuitive Machines mission, the IM-1 flight carries six Nasa payloads of instruments designed to collect data on the lunar environment ahead of Nasa’s planned return of astronauts to the moon this decade.
Thursday’s launch came a month after the lunar lander from another private firm, Astrobotic Technology, leaked a propulsion system en route to the moon shortly after it was placed into orbit on January 8 by a United Launch Alliance ( ULA) Vulcan rocket that made its debut. flight.
The failure of Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander, which also flew NASA cargo to the moon, was the third time a private company has failed to achieve a “soft landing” on the lunar surface, following failed attempts by companies from Israel and Japan.
These accidents illustrated the risks that Nasa faces in relying more on the commercial sector than it has in the past to realize its spaceflight goals.
Plans call for Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C vehicle, a hexagonal cylinder with six legs, to reach its destination after about a weeklong flight for a landing at crater Malapert A, near the moon’s south pole, on February 22.
If successful, the flight would represent the first controlled descent to the lunar surface by an American spacecraft since the last Apollo manned lunar mission in 1972, and the first by a private company.
It will also be the first trip to the lunar surface under Nasa’s Artemis lunar program as the US races to return astronauts to Earth’s natural satellite before China lands its own manned spacecraft there.
IM-1 is the latest test of Nasa’s strategy to pay for the use of spacecraft built and owned by private companies to reduce the cost of the Artemis missions, which are envisioned as precursors to human exploration of Mars become
During the Apollo era, Nasa bought rockets and other technology from the private sector, but owned and operated it itself.
Nasa announced last month that it was pushing back its target date for a first manned Artemis moon landing from 2025 to late 2026, while China said it was aiming for 2030.
Small landers like Nova-C are expected to get there first, with instruments to closely examine the lunar landscape, its resources and potential hazards. Odysseus will focus on space weather interactions with the Moon’s surface, radio astronomy, precision landing technologies and navigation.
Intuitive Machine’s IM-2 mission is scheduled to land at the lunar south pole in 2024, followed by an IM-3 mission later in the year with several small rovers.
Last month, Japan became the fifth country to put a lander on the moon, with its space agency Jaxa achieving an unusually precise “pen-tip” strike from its Slim probe. India became the fourth country to land on the moon last year, after Russia failed in an attempt in the same month.
The US, the former Soviet Union and China are the only other countries to have performed successful soft lunar touchdowns. In 2019, China achieved the first landing on the far side of the moon.
