ALBAWABA – In a mission, dubbed IM-1, that might become a first in history if succeeded, SpaceX takes off Odysseus, a private moon lander built by Intuitive Machines, on a Falcon 9 rocket launching from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Odysseus is set to land close to the moon’s south pole on Feb. 22, making it the first private spacecraft to reach the moon’s surface, after a failed mission by United Launch Alliance to launch Astrobotic’s Peregrine Moon lander attempting to set the same record, and a national achievement for the United States as first touchdown on the moon since NASA’s Apollo 17 mission in 1972, if successful.
Intuitive Machines says that after launch, Odysseus is planned to separate from the Falcon 9 rocket on a direct trajectory to the Moon, a step which was confirmed by SpaceX account on X (previously Twitter)
If commercial enterprises are able to accomplish this at a far cheaper cost than a conventional NASA mission, as reported by New York Times, it will pave the way for NASA and other organizations to conduct more extensive lunar exploration, which Joel Kearns, from NASA’s science mission directorate, says about “we’re trying to create a marketplace in a place where it didn’t exist” in a news conference, adding that to do so, cost needs to be an important consideration.
Odysseus intends to travel to the moon with a multitude of goods weighing 1,908 kilograms (4,206 pounds), Intuitive Machines will allegedly be paid $118 million to transport a variety of technological and research experiments for NASA as part of its cargo, according to Forbes, as well as materials created by apparel manufacturer Columbia Sportswear to insulate the lander, and a set of sculptures by artist Jeff Koons, which are a component of an NFT crypto project.
Despite the accomplishment of the launch, Odysseus still needs to conquer the challenge of landing in one of the most challenging parts of the moon, an area that is always obscured from light, with India being the last to successfully land on back in Aug. last year.
