Another month, one other strive on the moon — however not on Wednesday.
SpaceX introduced the postponement on Tuesday night time of the scheduled launch of a personal robotic lunar lander.
The spacecraft, constructed by Intuitive Machines of Houston, is on high the rocket on the launchpad. Weather circumstances have been favorable however a technical concern led to the delay of its flight by a minimum of a day. The subsequent try can be Thursday at 1:05 a.m. Eastern time.
If all goes properly then, it would arrange the primary American spacecraft to land softly on the moon’s floor for the reason that Apollo 17 moon touchdown in 1972. It can even be the most recent personal effort to ship a spacecraft to the moon.
Why was the launch postponed?
The Intuitive Machines lander, named Odysseus, was scheduled to launch at 12:57 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
In a post late on Tuesday on the web site X, SpaceX mentioned the temperature of methane gas for the lander was “off-nominal.”
If the technical drawback is mounted, forecasts name for favorable climate through the subsequent launch alternative on Thursday. There is one other backup launch alternative on Friday.
When and the place is the touchdown?
If the launch happens this week, the touchdown can be on Feb. 22 close to a crater named Malapert A. (Malapert A is a satellite tv for pc crater of the bigger Malapert crater, which is known as after Charles Malapert, a Seventeenth-century Belgian astronomer.)
Odysseus will enter orbit across the moon about 24 hours earlier than the touchdown try.
The touchdown website, about 185 miles from the south pole on the close to aspect of the moon, is comparatively flat, a better location for a spacecraft to land. No American spacecraft has ever landed on the lunar south pole, which is a spotlight of many area companies and corporations as a result of it could be wealthy in frozen water.
How large is the spacecraft?
Intuitive Machines calls its spacecraft design Nova-C and named this explicit lander Odysseus. It is a hexagonal cylinder with six touchdown legs, about 14 ft tall and 5 ft large. Intuitive Machines factors out that the physique of the lander is roughly the dimensions of an previous British telephone sales space — that’s, just like the Tardis within the “Doctor Who” science fiction tv present.
At launch, with a full load of propellant, the lander weighs about 4,200 kilos.
What goes to the moon?
NASA is the primary buyer for the Intuitive Machines flight; it’s paying the corporate $118 million to ship its payloads. NASA additionally spent an extra $11 million to develop and construct the six devices on the flight:
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A laser retroreflector array to bounce again laser beams fired from Earth.
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A LIDAR instrument to exactly measure the spacecraft’s altitude and velocity because it descends to the lunar floor.
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A stereo digital camera to seize video of the plume of mud kicked up by the lander’s engines throughout touchdown.
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A low-frequency radio receiver to measure the consequences of charged particles close to the lunar floor on radio alerts.
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A beacon, Lunar Node-1, to reveal an autonomous navigation system.
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An instrument within the propellant tank that’s to make use of radio waves to measure how a lot gas stays within the tank.
The lander can be carrying a number of different payloads, together with a digital camera constructed by college students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida; a precursor instrument for a future moon telescope; and an artwork challenge by Jeff Koons.
Wasn’t there simply one other American spacecraft headed to the moon?
On Jan. 8, Astrobotic Technology despatched its Peregrine lander towards the moon. But a malfunction with its propulsion system shortly after launch prevented any chance of touchdown. Ten days later, as Peregrine swung again towards Earth, it burned up within the environment above the Pacific Ocean.
Both Odysseus and Peregrine are half of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, or CLPS. The object of this system is to make use of industrial firms to ship experiments to the moon somewhat than NASA constructing and working its personal moon landers.
“We’ve always viewed these initial CLPS deliveries as being kind of a learning experience,” Joel Kearns, the deputy affiliate administrator for exploration in NASA’s science mission directorate, mentioned throughout a information convention on Tuesday.
The area company hopes this strategy can be less expensive, permitting it to ship extra missions extra incessantly because it prepares to ship astronauts again to the moon as half of its Artemis program.