Kennedy Space Center, USA – An American spacecraft took off on Thursday, February 15, from the Kennedy Space Center with the mission of reaching the Moon, in the second attempt made by a private company this year after a first failure in January.
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The company Intuitive Machines, in charge of the 'IM-1' mission, hopes to become the first non-governmental entity to perform a soft landing on the Earth's natural satellite and land the first American robot since the Apollo missions on its surface. more than five decades ago.
The hexagonal-shaped Nova-C lander called 'Odysseus' took off at 1:06 on Thursday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The mission named IM-1 was supposed to leave on Wednesday but the launch was postponed after SpaceX discovered abnormal temperatures when attempting to refuel the module.
The lunar landing module has a new type of supercooled liquid methane and oxygen engine that delivers the power to reach its destination quickly, avoiding long exposure to the high-radiation region surrounding Earth, known as the Van Allen belt.
Trent Martin, vice president of special systems at Intuitive Machines, told reporters this week that the “opportunity for the United States to return to the Moon for the first time since 1972 is a feat of engineering that requires a true desire to explore.”
Despite the delay, the spacecraft is scheduled to arrive on February 22 at its landing site, Malapert A, an impact crater located 300 kilometers from the lunar south pole.
The US space agency hopes to establish a long-term presence on the Moon and harvest ice for drinking water and rocket fuel under its Artemis program.
Colorful cargo
NASA paid Intuitive Machines $118 million to bring scientific equipment to the natural satellite to better understand and mitigate environmental risks to astronauts.
But the ship carries more colorful cargo, including a digital archive of human knowledge and 125 small sculptures of the Moon by artist Jeff Koons.
After landing on the moon, the charges are expected to operate for seven days before the lunar night begins at the south pole, when Odysseus will be inoperable.
IM-1 is the second mission under a NASA initiative created to delegate cargo services to the private sector to cut costs and stimulate a broader lunar economy.
The first, from the company Astrobotic, was launched in January but its Peregrine ship suffered a fuel leak and its landing module had to be deliberately destroyed in mid-flight.
Soft landing is a challenge because it involves navigating on unstable terrain with a delay of several seconds in communication with Earth and using the thrusters without the presence of an atmosphere that supports parachutes.
Only five countries have achieved this, with the former Soviet Union being the first, followed by the United States, which so far is the only country to put people on the lunar surface.
China has posed three times since 2013, India did so in 2023 and Japan last February, although its module has had difficulty staying activated.
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