The first American moon landing since 1972 will occur today as the spacecraft approaches the lunar surface | Top Vip News

Houston-based Intuitive Machines ready its Odysseus lander to land on the moon today, a thrilling one-hour, 13-minute descent from orbit to become the first American-built spacecraft to maintain a moon landing in more than 50 years and the first carried out by a private company.

A day after braking into a 57-mile-high orbit inclined 80 degrees to the moon’s equator, Odysseus’ methane-fueled main engine prepared to ignite around 3:11 p.m. EST, lowering the side opposite of the orbit to a point near the landing site about 186 miles from the moon’s south pole.

Like the 14 foot tall one spacecraft descends toward the surface, onboard cameras and lasers are programmed to scan the ground below to identify landmarks, providing direction information to the lander’s guidance system to help adjust trajectory.

An hour later, around 4:12 p.m., the main engine is expected to ignite again at an altitude of about 18 miles and continue running for the final 10 minutes of the descent, flipping Odysseus from a horizontal to vertical orientation and falling down. at just under 4 mph.

As the spacecraft falls below 100 feet, an innovative camera package, known as “EagleCam,” built by students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, will drop and attempt to photograph the lander’s final descent from A side. NASA cameras aboard the spacecraft will photograph the ground directly below.

By the time Odysseus reaches an altitude of about 33 feet above the surface, the main engine should have accelerated to the planned landing speed of about 2.2 mph (the walking speed for seniors).

It is expected to land near a crater known as Malapert A at 4:24 p.m., a week later. launch from Kennedy Space Center.

Video from cameras aboard the lander and EagleCam cannot be transmitted to Earth in real time, but Intuitive Machines engineers at the company’s Nova Control center in Houston say they should be able to verify the landing in about 15 seconds. The first images are expected in approximately half an hour.

A successful moon landing would mark the first landing by a U.S.-built spacecraft since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 and the first by a privately built spacecraft.

Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic It hoped to claim that honor last month with its Peregrine lander, but the mission was derailed by a ruptured propellant tank shortly after launch on Jan. 9. Two previous private lunar projects, one for Israel and the other for JapanIt also ended in failure.

Only the governments of the United States, the Soviet Union, China, India and Japan have managed to place landers on the surface of the Moon, and Japan’s “SLIM” lander she was only partially successful and capsized on landing on 19 January.

Peregrine and Odysseus were funded in part by NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, or CLPS (pronounced CLIPS), designed to encourage private industry to develop transportation capabilities that NASA can then use to transport payloads to Moon.

The agency’s goal is to help drive the development of new technologies and collect data that will be needed to Sagebrush astronauts planning to land near the moon’s south pole later this decade.

NASA paid Astrobotic $108 million for its participation in the Peregrine mission and another $129 million for the Odysseus instruments and transportation to the moon.

What’s on board the Odysseus lunar lander?

Odysseus was equipped with six NASA instruments and six other commercial payloads, including small lunar sculptures by artist Jeff Koons, proof-of-concept cloud storage technology, Columbia Sportswear insulating blankets and a small astronomical telescope.

Among NASA’s experiments: an instrument to study the charged particle environment on the moon’s surface, another designed to test navigation technologies, and downward-facing cameras designed to photograph how the lander’s engine exhaust disturbs the ground. at the landing site.

Also on board: an innovative sensor that uses radio waves to determine precisely how much cryogenic propellant remains in a tank in the weightless environment of space, a technology that is expected to prove useful for later lunar missions and other deep space trips.

Odysseus and its instruments are expected to operate on the surface for about a week, until the sun sets at the landing site. At that point, the lander’s solar cells will no longer be able to generate power and the spacecraft will shut down. Odysseus was not designed to survive the ultra-cold lunar night.