{"id":15484,"date":"2024-02-13T12:48:15","date_gmt":"2024-02-13T12:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/13\/just-one-month-after-failed-mission-a-second-us-lunar-lander-is-ready-to-make-an-attempt\/"},"modified":"2024-02-13T12:48:15","modified_gmt":"2024-02-13T12:48:15","slug":"just-one-month-after-failed-mission-a-second-us-lunar-lander-is-ready-to-make-an-attempt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/13\/just-one-month-after-failed-mission-a-second-us-lunar-lander-is-ready-to-make-an-attempt\/","title":{"rendered":"Just one month after failed mission, a second US lunar lander is ready to make an attempt"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

After a failed lunar landing mission last month, NASA is pinning its hopes on a second spacecraft \u2014 developed by a separate company \u2014 to make the first touchdown on the moon for the United States in more than five decades. <\/p>\n

The lunar lander, nicknamed Odysseus, or Odie for short, is set to take flight atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 12:57 a.m. ET on Wednesday. <\/p>\n

The rocket will propel the spacecraft into an oval-shaped orbit extending out to 380,000 kilometers (236,100 miles) around Earth. It will amount to \u201ca high-energy fastball pitch towards the moon,\u201d as Intuitive Machines CEO Stephen Altemus put it. His Houston-based company developed Odysseus. <\/p>\n

Once in Earth\u2019s orbit, the lunar lander will separate from the rocket and begin venturing on its own, using an onboard engine to boost itself on a direct trajectory toward the lunar surface. <\/p>\n

Odysseus is expected to spend a little more than a week free flying through space, with an attempt to touch down on the lunar surface expected February 22. <\/p>\n

If successful, Odysseus would become the first US spacecraft to make a soft landing on the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. <\/p>\n

Why the Odysseus mission matters<\/h3>\n

The launch of this lunar lander comes one month after Peregrine, a vehicle that Astrobotic Technology developed with NASA funding, failed on its mission. The Pittsburgh-based company revealed a goal-shattering fuel leak just hours after Peregrine launched on January 8. The spacecraft burned up in the atmosphere as it careened back toward Earth 10 days later. <\/p>\n

But NASA has sponsored the creation of a small fleet of privately developed lunar landers as part of a program the space agency calls CLPS, or Commercial Lunar Payload Services. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn CLPS, American companies used their own engineering and manufacturing practices instead of adherence to formal and traditional NASA procedures and NASA oversight,\u201d explained Joel Kearns, the space agency\u2019s deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA\u2019s Science Mission Directorate. \u201cCLPS is a test of that philosophy.\u201d <\/p>\n

The program\u2019s aim is to develop lunar landers under relatively cheap, fixed-price contracts, in the hopes of using the spacecraft to give the US a presence on the moon as a new international space race heats up. <\/p>\n

China, India and Japan are the only nations to have soft-landed vehicles on the moon in the 21st century. And while NASA remains confident the US will be the first country to return humans to the lunar surface, the global rush to plant robotic spacecraft on the moon is reaching a fever pitch. <\/p>\n

What separates NASA\u2019s approach from others is the way it has embraced commercialization \u2014 the idea that multiple spacecraft can be developed more cheaply and quickly with private industry competing for contracts than if the space agency were to develop its own. <\/p>\n

Intuitive Machines\u2019 Altemus calls this strategy \u201cforced innovation.\u201d <\/p>\n

All told, Intuitive Machines could receive up to $118 million from NASA for this mission. <\/p>\n

A stable of lunar landers<\/h3>\n

The NASA CLPS program does not hinge on every mission making a safe touchdown, but these first landing attempts could set the tone and pace for the space agency\u2019s renewed efforts to explore the moon robotically before trying to return astronauts to the lunar surface later this decade. <\/p>\n

Founded in 2013, Intuitive Machines will be the second of the CLPS program participants \u2014 after Astrobotic \u2014 to attempt a moon landing. (Two additional CLPS missions are planned for later in 2024.) <\/p>\n

Of the four companies slated to deliver lunar landers to the moon under the CLPS program, Intuitive Machines has the most orders\u00a0from NASA \u2014 with three moon missions on the books. <\/p>\n

What\u2019s on board<\/h3>\n

The Odysseus lander is a model called Nova-C, which Intuitive Machines describes as roughly the size of a British telephone booth with legs attached. <\/p>\n

The company aims to land the spacecraft near the moon\u2019s south pole, an area of high interest in the space race. This region is suspected to be home to water ice that could one day be converted into drinking water for astronauts or even rocket fuel. <\/p>\n

The south pole is also the same lunar region where NASA is seeking to land astronauts later this decade. <\/p>\n

The lander will be equipped with six NASA payloads \u2014 an array of scientific instruments designed to test new technology or evaluate the lunar environment, such as a study of how the moon\u2019s soil behaves during landing. <\/p>\n

Also on board will be commemorative objects \u2014 including a sculpture representing the moon phases designed in consultation with Jeff Koons \u2014 and technology from private-sector companies,\u00a0including Columbia Sportswear, which developed insulation material for the lander. <\/p>\n

If all goes according to plan, Odysseus will spend seven days operating on the moon as the lunar lander basks in the sun. But as the landing zone moves into Earth\u2019s shadow, experiencing lunar night, the spacecraft will be put to sleep. <\/p>\n

The odds of success<\/h3>\n

The past year has brought a couple successful lunar touchdowns \u2014 pulled off by India and Japan \u2014 as well as brutal setbacks, with Russia and the United States losing spacecraft in recent attempts. <\/p>\n

Altemus estimates that Intuitive Machines has about an 80% chance of safely landing Odysseus on the moon. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve stood on the shoulders of everybody who\u2019s tried before us,\u201d he said, adding that Intuitive Machines attempted to analyze the propulsion issue that plagued the Peregrine lander last month and ensured the same problem would not arise during Odysseus\u2019 mission. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe just have a fundamentally different architecture,\u201d Altemus added. <\/p>\n

But a successful attempt would mark only a starting point, he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a one-and-done operation at all,\u201d Altemus said. \u201cWe built a lunar program for the purpose of flying regularly to the moon.\u201d <\/p>\n

Establishing programs that can make regular robotic trips to the moon could facilitate a future in which lunar travel is common, inexpensive and fuels grander projects, such as a functioning lunar base with astronauts living and working there, according to vision laid out by NASA and its partners. <\/p>\n\n

This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a failed lunar landing mission last month, NASA is pinning its hopes on a second spacecraft \u2014 developed by a separate company \u2014 to make the first touchdown on the moon for the United States in more than five decades. The lunar lander, nicknamed Odysseus, or Odie for short, is set to take flight <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":15485,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15484","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}