Another private US company shot for the moon on Thursday, a month after a rival’s lunar lander missed its mark and crashed back.
Nasa, the main sponsor of experiments on board, is hoping for a successful moon landing next week as it seeks to jumpstart the lunar economy ahead of manned missions.
SpaceX’s Falcon rocket blasted off from Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center in the middle of the night, sending Intuitive Machines’ lunar lander on its way to the moon, 230,000 miles (370,000 km) away. The lander looked like a beautiful six-pointed star jewel – each point a leg – as it successfully separated from the upper stage and drifted off into the black void with the blue Earth far below.
If all goes well, a landing attempt will take place on February 22, after a day in lunar orbit.
Only five countries – the USA, Russia, China, India and Japan – have achieved a lunar landing and no private enterprise has yet done so. The US has not returned to the moon’s surface since the Apollo program ended more than five decades ago.
“There were a lot of sleepless nights getting ready for this,” Intuitive Machines co-founder and CEO Steve Altemus said before the flight.
The Houston-based company aims to put its 14-foot-tall, six-legged lander just 186 miles (300 km) shy of the moon’s south pole, the equivalent of landing inside Antarctica on Earth. This region – full of treacherous craters and cliffs, yet potentially rich in frozen water – is where Nasa plans to land astronauts later this decade. The space agency said its six navigation and technology experiments on the lander could help smooth the way.
Nasa’s first entry into its commercial lunar delivery service – Astrobotic Technology’s Peregrine lander – stumbled shortly after takeoff in early January. A ruptured fuel tank and massive leak caused the spacecraft to bypass the moon and tear back through the atmosphere 10 days after launch, breaking apart and burning up over the Pacific Ocean.
Others made it to the moon before ruining.
An Israeli non-profit lander crashed in 2019. Last year, a Tokyo company saw its lander crash into the moon, followed by a Russian crash.
Only the US sent astronauts to the moon, with Apollo 17 ending the program in December 1972. That was it for US moon landings until Astrobotic’s short-lived attempt last month.
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Intuitive Machines named its lander after Homer’s hero in the Odyssey.
“Godspeed, Odysseus. Now let’s go make history,” said Trent Martin, vice president of space systems.
Nasa pays Intuitive Machines $118m to get its latest set of experiments to the moon. The company also took on its own customers, including Columbia Sportswear, which is testing a metallic jacket fabric as a thermal insulator on the lander, and sculptor Jeff Koons, who is sending up 125-inch-sized lunar figurines in a translucent cube.
The lander also carries Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Eaglecam, which will take pictures of the lander as they both descend.
The spacecraft will cease operations after a week on the surface.
