Odysseus: The U.S. lunar landing mission in a bid to study the lunar environment for future lunar exploration experiments
The U.S. may be about to land its first commercial mission on the surface of the moon. On Thursday, the robotic probe known as Odysseus is scheduled to set down near the lunar south pole.
The company that built the spaceship is based in Houston. It took off from Florida last week aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. NASA has purchased several missions from private companies as part of the Commercial lunar payload services program.
The space agency is paying a fixed price of over $100 million for this mission, which is a very low price for space exploration. The NASA experiments that are on board will use the environment around the lander to study and possibly develop new technologies for future landings.
How to land a Lunar Mission at Malapert’s South Pole, says a Planetary Scientist from Quilty Space and how to keep it there
Odysseus will attempt to land near Malapert crater — a large crater near the moon’s south pole. The location offers many advantages, says Denevi, a planetary scientist. Landing sites near the south pole experience near-continuous sunlight, which can power a spacecraft’s solar cells for longer; and some of south pole’s dark craters are believed to be home to water in the form of ice.
“You have oxygen to breathe if you split the water into hydrogen and oxygen,” she says. The two elements are “also components that you can use for rocket fuel.”
The goal of the program is for private companies to build a system of suppliers that will allow America to land astronauts on the moon again. It wants commercial companies to scout out locations, land scientific instruments and rovers, and pave the way for human exploration.
“They wanted to facilitate the commercial sector, and you can see that in action on this Intuitive Machines flight,” says Chris Quilty, the co-CEO of Quilty Space, which analyzes the space business.
The commercial products on board include a space-age fabric from Columbia, and a small test of a system to back up data on the moon.
Chris Stott of Lonestar Data believes that data is the most important asset of a technological civilization. “Should we keep it down here or should we put it somewhere where there isn’t any climate change?” Where does there not seem to be an atmosphere?
Stott says his company has already successfully stored and retrieved a digital copy of the Declaration of Independence from the lander. He has some future clients who are looking to store a lot of data on the moon.
But before NASA can realize its ambitions and before your pictures can be backed up on a lunar hard drive, Odysseus has to stick the landing. And that’s not a given. Privately funded lunar missions from Israel and Japan have all crashed in the past few years, while a NASA-backed Astrobotic mission fell back to Earth in January after suffering a fuel leak.
While lunar landings are always difficult, in the 1960s and 1970s they were even more so, says Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer who closely follows spaceflight.
Robotic missions like Odysseus are impossible to use parachutes on because there’s no air there. McDowell says Odysseus could very well crash, like many landers before it, but he says companies are learning from each mistake.
Source: Private company Intuitive Machines is set to land on the moon. Here’s what to know
The Mission of the Nova-C Odysseus Lunar Lander: Monitoring the Moon after the Failure of the Astrobotic Peregrine Lander
“Even when they fail, they’re not failing ignominiously,” he says. “With a certain amount of iteration and a few more tries, I’m confident that they can succeed.”
After the failed launch of the Astrobotic Peregrine lander last month, a privately owned space craft was able to achieve its goal.
NASA described the Nova-C Odysseus as a hexagonal cylinder on six legs, and it is carrying a number of science and research payloads to collect data about the Moon. Water ice hiding in permanently shadowed craters of the lunar south pole is a region of particular scientific interest. It could prove useful before NASA’s Artemis program brings people back to the moon.
After it launched, Odysseus took a number of photos, including selfies with the Earth a day after. One image of the Moon taken by the landers camera shows the moon from 100,000 kilometers away followed by a shot of the Bel’kovich K crater.
It has a laser retroreflector array to help other spacecraft make precision landings and a radio navigation beacon to provide geolocation data to landers, rovers, and eventually astronauts.