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Intuitive Machines has landed a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon, a historic first for a private company.
Flight controllers confirmed the landing at 5:23 p.m. CST, although the spacecraft’s exact position is unclear as engineers work with the lander to refine its signal.
“We can confirm without a doubt that our instruments are on the lunar surface and that we are transmitting,” said TIM Crain, mission director and Intuitive Machines CTO. “So congratulations to the IM team, we’ll see how much more we can get from this.”
He said, “Houston, Odysseus has found his new home.”
“What an outstanding effort,” CEO Steve Altemus said after the landing. “I know it was nail-biting, but we are on the surface and we are transmitting. Welcome to the moon.”
The company also managed to make the landing successful with the spacecraft’s laser range finder – which determines essential variables such as altitude and horizontal velocity – Being broken. Instead, the lander took advantage of one of the onboard payloads, NASA’s laser and Doppler lidar sensors, to guide the spacecraft to the lunar surface.
This is the first time the US has put hardware on the Moon in nearly fifty years. The spacecraft’s landing site – just outside the edge of a crater called Malapert-A – is the closest any lander has come to the moon’s south pole. The South Pole has emerged as an area of major interest to both commercial companies and NASA; The space agency is eyeing the region as a potential location to establish a sustained human presence on the Moon as part of its Artemis program.
This is certainly an exceptionally positive start for Houston-based Intuitive Machines, one of the few companies in the world focused on providing services on and around the Moon. Along with lunar landers, the company is also developing technologies related to mobility, power and data services for the Moon. The company estimates that lunar market activity – which exists on a very small scale today, and is driven primarily by NASA funding – will only increase in the coming years.
The mission itself is the result of a NASA contract awarded under the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. The CLPS program is designed to begin commercial development of landers to deliver scientific and research payloads to the lunar surface. In total, Intuitive Machines’ contract is worth just under $118 million.
“As of our third planned mission, we are seeing more and more non-CLPS payloads from domestic and international companies and institutions,” said Josh Marshall, director of communications for Intuitive Machines.
Intuitive Machines’ win comes on the heels of another CLPS award winner, Astrobotic, failing to put its lander on the Moon. That mission was cut short shortly after launch due to a catastrophic propellant leak.
Rewatch the landing here:
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