Update for 7 pm ET: Touchdown! Instinctive Machines reports that its IM-1 lander Odysseus has actually arrived on the moon and is sending a faint, however certain, signal. “Houston, Odysseus has actually discovered his brand-new home,” objective director Tim Crain stated.
See our complete landing story, video and images.
We’re simply hours far from what might be the very first moon landing by an American spacecraft in 50 years, a success that would start the country’s wish to ultimately develop a long-lasting existence on the moon as part of its Artemis program.
Odysseus (nicknamed “Odie”), a 14-foot-tall (4.3 meters) lander constructed and run by Houston business Intuitive Machines, will try to land near to the moon’s south pole today at 6:24 p.m. EST (2330 GMT).
You can tune in to the landing live here at Space.com, thanks to NASA, or straight by means of the area company. Protection will start at 5:00 p.m. EST (2200 GMT).
Related: Intuitive Machines’ personal Odysseus probe snaps 1st moon picture, gets in lunar orbit ahead of historical landing effort
Instinctive Machines’ Odysseus moon lander releases from the 2nd phase of its SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Feb. 15, 2024. (Image credit: NASA TELEVISION)
Odysseus introduced Feb. 15 on a six-day journey to the moon, shuttling 12 payloads, 6 of which are NASA science and innovation instruments. (The firm paid Intuitive Machines $118 million for the trip to the moon.) After cruising more than 620,000 miles (1,000,000 kilometers), the telephone-booth-sized spacecraft aced maneuvers the other day (Feb. 21) that put it in a tight circular orbit around the moon a day ahead of its landing.
“We’re really delighted, however we’re likewise extremely worried,” stated Jack Burns, a teacher at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who’s the primary private investigator for among the NASA science instruments onboard Odysseus. “The success has actually been blended in going to the surface area of the moon.”
If all goes to prepare today, Odysseus will arrive at the rim of a little crater called Malapert A, about 190 miles (300 km) from the lunar the south pole on the Earth-facing side. Success would be historical, as no personal probe has ever soft-landed on the moon before.
Others have actually attempted. Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander, which introduced last month, was carried out in by a propellant leakage and wound up crashing back to Earth. The Israeli Beresheet and Japanese Hakuto-R landers both reached lunar orbit however crashed throughout their goal attempts, in April 2019 and April 2023, respectively.
Malapert A was the 2nd website picked for Odysseus’ objective, which is called IM-1. The very first remained in Oceanus Procellarum, the biggest lunar basaltic plain, which is likewise a prospective landing website for the Artemis program, NASA’s undertaking to return astronauts to the moon for the very first time given that the Apollo age. In 2015, nevertheless, Intuitive Machines altered the landing area to Malapert A due to concerns over polluting the area if Odysseus crashed.
