Intuitive Machines Makes Lunar History with Odysseus Landing

TFD – Intuitive Machines creates history as its Odysseus spacecraft achieves a groundbreaking lunar landing, marking a significant milestone in space exploration.

For the first time in more than half a century, a US-built spacecraft has made a soft landing on the moon.

On Thursday night, there was a lot of suspense and drama surrounding Intuitive Machines’ effort to land its Odysseus spacecraft in a small crater not too far from the moon’s south pole. NASA pronounced the mission successful around 20 minutes after touchdown, although there were still some concerns over the lander’s orientation and overall condition. Why? because Odysseus’s phone signal was poor while he was calling home.

It was a wonder Odysseus survived at all, though, considering what the ship and its creator, Houston-based Intuitive Machines, had to endure earlier on Thursday.

Going Astray

Mission controllers had to send a hastily assembled, last-minute software patch up to the lander while it was still in orbit above the moon, which caused the landing attempt to be delayed by roughly two hours. A vehicle operator’s least favorite task is to patch their spacecraft’s software right before its most important maneuver. But Intuitive Machines was close to collapse.

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Earlier on Thursday, the company realized that its navigation lasers and cameras were not operational. These rangefinders are essential for two functions during landing: terrain-relative navigation and hazard-relative navigation. These two modes help the flight computer on Odysseus to determine precisely where it is during descent—by snapping lots of images and comparing them to known moon topography—and to identify hazards below, such as boulders, in order to find a safe landing site.

The absence of these rangefinders would have caused Odysseus to collide with the moon. Fortunately, there were several science payloads on this flight. NASA is spending approximately $118 million to have six scientific payloads delivered to the lunar surface as part of its commercial lunar program.

The Navigation Doppler Lidar experiment, a 15-kilogram device with three tiny cameras, just so happened to be one of these payloads. NASA aimed to test technology with this NDL payload that could be applied to enhance navigation systems for upcoming lunar landings.

Odysseus’s only hope was if it could somehow connect to two of the three cameras in the NDL experiment, using one for navigation relative to the terrain and the other for relative to hazards. Thus, software was built quickly and sent to the lander. This was real MacGyver material. Would it, however, be successful?

A Novel Residence

The Odysseus lander started its descent from a circular orbit 57 miles (92 kilometers) above the surface of the moon, an hour and 13 minutes before its planned landing time. The lander began a powered descent, using its main engine powered by liquid oxygen and methane, 11 minutes before touchdown on this timeline. During these final, crucial minutes, Odysseus’ improvised terrain-relative navigation camera scanned the surface for hazards, such as boulders, to ensure a safe landing site.

The mission operators were aware that it could take a few minutes to receive a strong signal from the lander, which was transmitting data to massive satellite dishes on Earth, following the touchdown. In the mission control room for Intuitive Machines, the first one, the second, and then the fifth minute passed in an uneasy stillness. Nothing.

Tim Crain, the mission director, finally announced that the lander was sending a weak signal back to Earth after ten minutes.

Co-founder Crain asserted, “We’re not out of the game yet.”

Another few minutes went by. The lander’s high-gain antenna was still providing the corporation with a weak signal. Crain declared, “Odysseus has a new home,” to an enthusiastic shout from the control room.

Nevertheless, the faint signal raised concerns. Could it be that the spaceship was about to crash over?

On the social networking platform X, Intuitive Machines eventually released more conclusive evidence approximately two hours later: “Flight controllers have confirmed Odysseus is upright and starting to send data after troubleshooting communications.” We are currently attempting to downlink the initial lunar surface photos.

They had arrived safely.

vital to NASA

This mission was a component of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program, wherein the space agency pays private enterprises to transport additional goods, including science experiments, to the lunar surface. Since the corporations are still getting used to landing on the moon, the space agency is willing to overlook a few missteps.

Odysseus reaching the surface and starting to communicate back to Earth is a major accomplishment for Intuitive Machines and NASA. For the commercial space industry, this is a historic event because no private spacecraft has ever made it to the moon safely before.

NASA is funding a second commercial lunar expedition. Last month, a Vulcan rocket carrying Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander was launched into space. But soon after Peregrine broke free of the Vulcan rocket, one of its propulsion tanks burst, dealing Peregrine a deadly blow. Astrobotic launched its spacecraft back into Earth’s atmosphere at NASA’s request so that it could be disposed of securely.

So why does NASA fund such high-risk endeavors?

The space agency thinks private businesses will ultimately learn how to fly cars to the moon. Additionally, NASA will only have to pay a small portion of what it would have to pay for conventionally built lunar services until the service becomes more regular. Therefore, NASA is essentially incurring some short-term risks in exchange for certain long-term rewards. One of those gambles appears to have paid off on Thursday.

Ars Technica was the original home of this story.