Another month, another attempt at the moon, but not Wednesday.
SpaceX announced Tuesday evening the postponement of the planned launch of a private robotic lunar lander.
The spacecraft, built by Intuitive Machines of Houston, sits atop the rocket on the launch pad. The weather conditions were favorable but a technical problem delayed his flight by at least a day. The next attempt will be Thursday at 1:05 a.m. Eastern.
If all goes well, it will allow the first U.S. spacecraft to soft-land on the surface of the Moon since the Apollo 17 moon landing in 1972. It will also be the last private effort to send a spacecraft to the Moon. Moon.
Why was the launch postponed?
The Intuitive Machines lander, named Odysseus, was scheduled to launch at 12:57 a.m. ET Wednesday on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
In a post Tuesday evening On the X website, SpaceX said the methane temperature for the lander was “off-nominal.”
If the technical problem is resolved, the forecast calls for favorable weather at the next launch opportunity on Thursday. There is another backup launch opportunity on Friday.
When and where does the landing take place?
If the launch takes place this week, the landing will take place on February 22 near a crater named Malapert A. (Malapert A is a satellite crater of the larger Malapert crater, which is named after Charles Malapert, a Belgian astronomer from Seventeenth century.)
Ulysses will enter orbit around the Moon approximately 24 hours before the landing attempt.
The landing site, about 185 miles from the south pole on the near side of the moon, is relatively flat, an easier place for a spacecraft to land. No U.S. spacecraft has ever landed at the lunar south pole, which is the focus of many space agencies and companies because it can be rich in frozen water.
How big is the spaceship?
Intuitive Machines calls its spacecraft design Nova-C and has named this particular lander Odysseus. It is a hexagonal cylinder with six landing legs, measuring approximately 14 feet high and 5 feet wide. Intuitive Machines points out that the body of the lander is about the size of an old British telephone box, i.e. like the Tardis in the science fiction TV show “Doctor Who.”
At launch, with a full propellant load, the lander weighs approximately 4,200 pounds.
What’s going to the moon?
NASA is the primary customer for the Intuitive Machines flight; it pays the company $118 million to deliver its payloads. NASA also spent an additional $11 million to develop and build the flight’s six instruments:
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An array of laser retroreflectors to reflect laser beams fired from Earth.
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A LIDAR instrument to accurately measure the altitude and speed of the spacecraft as it descends to the lunar surface.
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A stereo camera to capture video of the dust plume raised by the lander’s engines during landing.
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A low-frequency radio receiver to measure the effects of charged particles near the lunar surface on radio signals.
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A beacon, Lunar Node-1, to demonstrate an autonomous navigation system.
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An instrument in the propellant tank that uses radio waves to measure the amount of fuel remaining in the tank.
The lander also carries a few other payloads, including a camera built by students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida; a precursor instrument for a future lunar telescope; and an art project by Jeff Koons.
Wasn’t there just another American spacecraft heading to the Moon?
On January 8, Astrobotic Technology sent its Peregrine lander to the Moon. But a malfunction in its propulsion system shortly after launch prevented any possibility of landing. Ten days later, as Peregrine returned to Earth, it burned up in the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean.
Both Odysseus and Peregrine are part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, program. The goal of the program is to use commercial companies to send experiments to the Moon rather than NASA building and operating its own lunar landers.
“We always viewed these initial CLPS deliveries as a sort of learning experience,” Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said at a news conference. Tuesday.
The space agency hopes this approach will be much less costly, allowing it to send more missions more frequently as it prepares to return astronauts to the Moon as part of its Artemis program.
