The First Private Lunar Landing of the US Apollo Mission, Odysseus, Upon its Departure from the Moon

The first private lunar landing took place on February 22, 2009, and was a historic accomplishment. The first US lunar landers in over 40 years happened when the last Apollo crew visited the Moon in 1972.

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. 11 minutes before its touchdown, the landers main engine began a powered descent, powered by liquid oxygen and methane. 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 exact state of the spaceship was not known immediately after its landing. A faint signal was sent back to Houston, indicating that at least part of it survived the touchdown. “Odysseus has found its new home,” said mission director Tim Crain as the control room burst into cheers.

Regardless of how operational the spacecraft might be going forward, the landing is a major shot in the arm for US and commercial efforts to return to the Moon. NASA paid for much of the private mission, but is counting on companies like Intuitive Machines to help bring equipment to the Moon in order to get astronauts back there.

“The US has returned to the Moon,” said NASA administrator Bill Nelson. The power and promise of NASA’s commercial partnerships are shown in today’s day.

Missions to the South Pole of the Moon: The Odysseus Mission, a Solar-Powered Launch and a Mission to the Malapert A Crater

Depending on how communications go, the first pictures from the lunar surface are expected within a few hours. If Odysseus’s scientific payloads check out successfully, they could collect data for up to seven days, until night falls at the landing site and there is no more solar power left for operations.

Five of the last nine Moon landings have failed. Among the failures is a mission launched last month by Astrobotic in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which ran out of fuel within hours of launch due to a valve malfunction. But also last month, the Japanese space agency succeeded in putting its SLIM lander near Shioli crater near the Moon’s equator, although the spacecraft landed upside down.

The spacecraft descended to a lower altitude after its engines were fired and began to look under the boulders and craters. It navigated towards its intended landing site and fired its engines again to slow its descent, ultimately touching down on the surface.

The six-legged, phone-booth-sized spacecraft landed near the Malapert A crater, around 300 kilometres from the lunar south pole. NASA is interested in the Moon’s south pole because the region’s dirt and shadowy craters might contain ice that could provide fuel and other resources for future lunar explorers. Most lunar landers have visited the Moon’s equatorial regions but the only mission to land near the south pole was India’s Chandrayaan3 last August.

NASA has six payloads on board Odysseus, including a set of cameras to study how rocket exhaust interacts with the lunar surface. NASA wants to send astronauts to the south pole of the Moon as soon as next year, using flights to find out how to return to the Moon. A second mission with the intent of carrying a drill to the south polar region is expected to be complete by the end of the year.

The first craft to burn a methane-based rocket fuel in space is Odysseus. Methane-based propellants use less gas and can be more eco-friendly than other rocket propellants. They need to stay at the ultra-cold temperatures and are more difficult to work with. Several other aerospace companies are planning to use methane fuels in the future.

The Orbital Failure of the Intuitive Machines Navigation Doppler Lidar Experiment: The Case of Odysseus

The landing attempt was delayed by about two hours after mission controllers had to send a hastily cobbled together, last-minute software patch up to the lander while it was still in orbit around the moon. The last thing an operator would want to do is patch the software just seconds before it makes a crucial move. But Intuitive Machines was desperate.

The only chance Odysseus had was if it could use one of the NDL experiment’s cameras to navigate terrain relative and the other to navigate hazard-relative. There was no time to waste so the software was written and uploaded to the lander. This was some true MacGyver stuff. But would it work?

The navigation doppler lidar experiment is a 15-Kilogram package that has three small cameras. NASA was looking for technologies that might be used to improve navigation systems in future landing attempts on the moon.

This story was originally published on Ars Technica, a trusted source for technology news. Ars is owned by WIRED’s parent company, Condé Nast.

It was a miracle that the spaceship and its developer, Houston-based Intuitive Machines, made it after what happened earlier Thursday.