The first touchdown of a US-made spacecraft on the moon in over fifty years landed today. The last American vessel to land on the moon was Apollo 17. However, this is the first ever soft landing on the moon by a private company.
The Intuitive Machines lander is being launched aboard a SpaceX rocket. According to Intuitive Machines CEO Stephen Altemus, the spacecraft was estimated to have an 80% chance of safely landing on the moon.
The Odysseus lander is nicknamed “Odie” or IM-1 and is equipped with six NASA science instruments which are designed to test new technology and analyze the lunar environment.
The spacecraft will not be able to offer live footage of the landing, but Intuitive Machines will share computer generated graphics based on data directly from the robotic explorer.
In the past six months, India and Japan have reached the moon with robotic vehicles.
USC Research Professor of Astronautics David Barnhart reveals private space crafts are actually cheaper to build than public.
David Barnhart: The industry will take more risk in expectations of things working, or they’ll utilize different methodologies, which may be as an example, utilize commercial components, but multiple commercial components to provide both safety of the mission as well as low cost, whereas NASA or others would, you know, spend a lot of time on each individual component which drives the cost up.
Barnhart talked about current developments that are in motion for the future of space travel.
Barnhart: There’s sort of two major areas that are happening as we speak, you’re we’re talking about one, which is opening up the moon in a way that we had never envisioned, whether it’s commercial, whether it’s long duration, from governments that are setting up crude posts there. The other one is, is in general, and you can put quotes around it, but it’s called space servicing, in essence, a completely new echo system, where companies are doing business in space, to other satellites or other platforms in space. It’s, it’s basically the robotics capability, refueling, building satellites in orbit, building large structures in orbit. It’s truly the next step.
While other companies have tried and failed, Odie seemed to prevail. The success of today’s launch shows that Houston might not actually have a problem.
For Annenberg Media, I’m Nathan Silva.