Essay by Eric Worrall
An exciting new milestone in the quest to conquer space.
Moon landing today: US clinches first touchdown in 50 years
By Steve Gorman and Joey Roulette
February 23, 202410:51 AM GMT+10Updated an hour agoFeb 22 (Reuters) – A spacecraft built and flown by Texas-based company Intuitive Machines landed near the south pole of the moon on Thursday, the first U.S. touchdown on the lunar surface in more than half a century and the first ever achieved by the private sector.
The uncrewed six-legged robot lander, dubbed Odysseus, touched down at about 6:23 p.m. EST (2323 GMT), the company and NASA commentators said in a joint webcast of the landing from Intuitive Machines’ (LUNR.O), opens new tab mission operations center in Houston.
…
“Our equipment is on the surface of the moon, and we are transmitting, so congratulations IM team,” Intuitive Machines mission director Tim Crain was heard telling the operations center. “We’ll see what more we can get from that.”
…
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/us-nears-attempt-first-moon-landing-half-century-with-private-robot-spacecraft-2024-02-22/
A huge congratulations to mission director Tim Crain and his team, I think we’re all looking forward to the next Intuitive Machines mission.
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Not A Space Agency has abandoned actual space missions, by and large.
Yep, NASA’s buying them now from the equivalent of a (CLPS) vending machine offering a current choice of lunar landers from ten different manufacturers.
(see listing at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Lunar_Payload_Services )
If NASA were not wasting money on a useless space station and engaged in yet another big rocket to the moon contest with China, there would be plenty of money for actual space science missions.
I was thinking of CAGW through GISS, and “Muslim Outreach”, among other diversions.
At least the space station and rocket to the moon have something to do with its actual mission.
Wasting money has something to do with their mission?
Please note the lander was designed, developed, built, launched and is being operated as part of NASA’s CLPS program.
Yes but can it take off again and return to Earth? That’d be impressive if it could do the round trip.
No, never part of the plan for this lander.
But they are busy with DEI!
Amazing that they kept that old Hollywood stage set for so long.
Just kidding! Hold all those rebuttal comments please 🙂
Thank god I wasn’t drinking my coffee when I read this. 🤣🤣🤣
At least they fixed the lighting problem 😎
Ha ha ha ha ha! That was funny. I was listening intensely for the famous “Good luck Mr. Gorski” remark (-:
.
Yeah, so the old Capricon One set may work, huh
Personally, I think Obama set the US back by at least a decade or even two. Should we apportion some of the blame to his chief scientific advisor; the ‘global warming causes colder winters’ guy? Either way, the manned programme fell by the wayside; hitching rides with the Russians.
Only the largest states like the US or Russia could do the heavy lifting of beginning the venture into space. How well I recall the complaints about expenditure on the Apollo programme. But it’s all changed now. You want something put in orbit etc? Go Falcon 9. It’s an incredibly reliable workhorse.
Will SpaceX go on to ‘build better worlds’? The Weyland-Yutani corporation might want to copyright that first….
In almost all areas. Was anything better after 8 years of Obama?
You mean apart from the Obama’s bank balance?
” . . . and the first ever achieved by the private sector.”
Ooops . . . a careful readout of events leading up to the landing reveals that the Intuitive Machines Odysseus (aka Nova-C) vehicle would have failed to achieve a soft landing on the Moon had it not been able to use a NASA-payload, an experimental Navigation Doppler Lidar for Precise Velocity and Range Sensing, as a replacement for the craft’s failed laser navigation system. So, in fact it was a IM-NASA craft that executed this Moon landing.
Any info on who made that LIDAR? i would be surprised if it’s a mostly (say >70%) NASA in-house device.
If you are referring to the Lidar system that Intuitive Machines built into Odysseus (the one that failed), you should be aware of the NUMEROUS commercial manufacturers of Lidar navigation systems that supply such for UAVs, small drones, robots and semi-autonomous automobiles.
Just Google “commercial Lidar navigation systems”. The resulting product listings are almost certain to NOT include “NASA in-house” parts.
As to who made the Lidar system that IM built into its vehicle, who knows . . . moreover, who cares?
Well, I thought you were making a point about a NASA payload, but I guess I don’t care anymore.
The IM lasers didn’t operate due to the eye protection safety switch being left on the off the shelf lasers, and the switches can not be bypassed through software. So, the lasers actually didn’t fail, the crew made a mistake not bypassing the safety. This will not happen again.
Sounds like as good an excuse as any, coming from an inexperienced commercial space company that is.
centimeter accuracy radar altimeters are commercially available. Don’t think this was a huge issue. And, do you start naming every vender that was used? It was still IM doing the integration.
The question is: do you consider the NASA experimental payload as being an integrated part of the Odysseus lander vehicle? My understanding is that the IM-controlled Odysseus mission never planned on using that payload . . . and I view that as a huge issue.
“centimeter accuracy radar altimeters are commercially available.”
The Odysseus navigation systems under discussion were Lidar based, not radar based.
Does NASA own any manufacturing facilities?
Yes, actually machine shops and such.
I worked at Langley (where the LIDAR package being discussed used on this MI mission was developed) for a while in the mid 70s for the support contractor. While operating a PU truck I picked up a model of the space shuttle, made of metal, from the machine shop. It was loaded on my truck on a pallet covered with a tarp. It was about 20 inches long with a tapered support down to the mount and I transported it to the cryogenic wind tunnel for testing.
Picked it up INSIDE the machine shop and delivered it INSIDE the wind tunnel building, with the doors closed at both locations.
Funny thing is I had NO security clearance and no one accompanied me and the model on the trip. They uncovered it at the wind tunnel while while I was still there. I didn’t know what it was until later when discussions of the shuttle became public. As I remember, it was pretty close to the end design already, in the summer of 1975. My understanding of the cryogenic wind tunnel is that the low temperature made the flow act as if it was a much higher velocity.
There was a metal framework that was called High Steel that they would use to drop planes from for safety testing. Lots of people would go there for the show, I drove a bunch of NASA personnel out there once. It was a nice show, but only took less than a minute. They would sometimes drop it on the concrete, sometimes they would bring in dirt. I was told that they built a slanted platform and would hang astronauts and a lander mock up from cables so that they would be operating at the 1/6th gravity of the moon during the run up to the moon landings. That was before my time there. From Wiki:
I was putting landers on the moon in the ’80’s. Only cost a couple of quarters too.
If a robotic moon lander can make a precision landing on the moon 380,000 miles away, perhaps Tesla can train it’s vehicles not to collide at high speed with semi trucks only a few yards down the road.
. . . except for the fact that, in the real world, the latter is far more difficult than the former.
No semi trucks on the moon, just yet.
If there were semi trucks on the moon, this might have been a very different story.
The problem is that Tesla won’t use LIDAR.
It is about 380,000 km to the moon, or about 239,000 miles.
I just got off of the IM website.
NO updates regarding the lander. Just a mention of a NASA news conference to come.
IF the thing landed so well, why no pictures, etc?
I think there may be problems.
We shall see.
Yes . . . it’s very curious . . . the (imaging) silence is deafening, as the saying goes.
Odysseus was carrying a camera system designed by students and faculty from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University that was to be ejected from the spacecraft at about 100 feet above the moon’s surface to enable taking images of the vehicle and lunar surface during the landing event.
Imaging the lunar dust kicked up by the soft landing was stated as one of the primary mission objectives.
I just found a post by IM on X. Newer than what is on their web site.
They are being obtuse.
BTW, if they have limited comms, the super high resolution photos can take FOREVER to transmit. If they didn’t have a “thumbnail” mode, as is possible, we may not get many pictures for a while.
They have less than 2 weeks till “night” and loss of solar power.
Of course this could all be a publicity scam for the NASA press conference, just to gin up attention and attendance. I guess we will see then.
I watched the press conference. The lander is on its side. One solar panel is getting good sun. They have a couple of antennae working, but some are not, and will not work. The low data rate is why no photos, but they THINK they will be able to get a higher rate. They apparently are giving priority to their paying customers for “telemetry”.
It does not appear to be damaged. They hope to eject the camera that was supposed to be used during landing, but could not be used due to the last minute change of LIDAR and the reprogramming of the landing software.
They hope to have a picture this weekend.
Fingers crossed. It was a good first attempt and a soft landing. just not 100%
It fell over.
Yes, that now appears to be the case:
“The moon lander dubbed Odysseus is . . . resting on its side . . .The vehicle is believed to have caught one of its six landing feet on the lunar surface near the end of its final descent and tipped over, coming to rest sideways, propped up on a rock . . . Less promising was the fact that two of the spacecraft’s antennae were left pointed at the surface, a circumstance that will limit communications with the lander . . .”
—source: https://www.reuters.com/technology/space/moon-lander-described-alive-well-day-after-white-knuckle-lunar-touchdown-2024-02-23/
Let’s put that in perspective with yesterday’s announcement from NASA Administrator Bill Nelson who, seeking immediate and unwarranted backslapping publicity, congratulated Intuitive Machines on the landing, calling the milestone a “triumph.” “Odysseus has taken the moon,” Nelson said in a video message that aired during live coverage of the event. “This feat is a giant leap forward for all of humanity.”
— source: https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/moon-landing-odysseus-touches-down-lunar-surface-n1308924
Hmmm . . . a giant leap, or perhaps just a small trip?
If this was a “successful lunar soft landing”, as is stated in the above article and in uncountable MSM news articles over the last 27 hours, then I’ll eat a horse.
Every child wins a prize generation.
And it’s not like Intuitive Machines wasn’t warned.
See attached image of the Japanese SLIM lunar lander, tipped over on the Moon, after its unsuccessful landing on Jan 19, 2024.
Ok. So robots that appear on TV in a gladiatorial arena developed several examples of a ‘self-righting mechanism’ but this idea failed to get through to Japan, IM or NASA?
It is all about the total weight of the lander. Self righting device would be heavy.
They need to get the landing software right. How many tries did it take SpaceX to get their landings down? Now they stick the landing, on land of on a drone ship, every time.
The problem is that if you want to include a self-righting mechanism, you have to (a) account for its mass, which will directly subtract from otherwise available payload mass, and (b) make sure the self-righting mechanism will work reliably under all possible upset orientations, and (c) add in the cost of designing, manufacturing and testing such a mechanism.
Far better to design the lander and its mission parameters (and perform adequate pre-flight testing) to make sure the chances of it tipping over are vanishingly small.
Previous US NASA lunar landers from the Surveyor series and the Apollo LEMs showed this is possible with 100% success (i.e., none tipped over).
BTW, the design maximum tilt angle for an Apollo lunar excursion module with respect to lunar surface horizontal is variously stated as 12 or 15 degrees. Apollo 15 had the largest tilt after landing at about 11 degrees, see attached photo.
I looked to see what this landing was to accomplish.
The Odysseus lunar lander, nicknamed “Odie” has a
mission to assess the environment of Moon’s south
pole ahead of NASA’s current plan to return a crewed
mission there in late 2026.
While President, Donald Trump asked NASA to return to the Moon and to land humans on the surface by 2024. Now The Artemis III { ! 3 } mission is delayed by the failure of SpaceX’s Starship and its complex nature. Such as, needing perhaps 10 refuelings, and new spacesuits.
Artemis II { ! 2 } – a 4-person “fly by” is now delayed until September 2025.
The “humans on the moon” part may take a while — maybe 2030! Other guesses?
Remember the Kubrick movie 2001: A Space Odyssey? Missed that date by the proverbial
mileparsec.So many things technically flawed currently with planning to use a Starship variant as a lunar lander . . . first likely unmanned attempt to do so will be after 2028, IMHO.
Per NASA baseline plan of using a NRHO staging orbit and rendezvous and in-space cryogenic propellant refueling at a “Gateway” station in that orbit, both for humans going to the Moon and then returning to Earth, the technical risks are so high that, again IMHO, we won’t see US astronauts walking on the Moon—and most importantly, successfully returning to Earth—until well after 2030.
As long as the FAA has a say in the launch cadence of the Starship at Boca Chica, they WILL attempt to delay the progress of SpaceX. Musk wants to just launch MORE often and then determine the best configuration, as was done with the Falcon development.
They (Brandon and the Democrat oligarchs) don’t want SpaceX to be able to launch the next generation of Starlink satellites until the Brandon administration has spent the $800,000,000.00 plus in rural internet access money that they have denied to Starlink. Starlink is the only system available across all of the US and by far least expensive. This is all for the benefit of the FOB, Friends of Brandon. The entirety of the US government less the Space Force, are doing whatever they can to block every one of Musk’s businesses.
Just one example of money going to extremely expensive service instead of Starlink: https://www.rd.usda.gov/newsroom/news-release/usda-invests-21-million-high-speed-broadband-rural-georgia
At Kennedy space center SpaceX started to build a launch/landing tower for the Starship but then stopped months (over a year?) ago because NASA was not helping with the Environmental Impact Statement. NOW they are building a second tower in Texas AND the Space Force is processing the EIS for 2 sites on Cape Canaveral Space Force Base 3 or 4 miles from the partially built tower at Kennedy. NASA also gave United Launch Alliance (Boeing and Lockheed Martin) and Blue Origin (Bezos) each 2 times the money they did SpaceX for future launches, to prop up their crony in Bezos and their crony Military Industrial complex providers.
BTW I have Starlink after dumping the local DSL. Being rural I had limited options. I got Starlink almost 2 years ago and have GREAT service, always 130 or more down, 20 or so up and 20 to 40 ms latency. When I ordered it, there was a lot of talk online of delayed deliveries but I received mine in less than a week. I believe Starlink was prioritizing the orders for true rural purchasers. Last year we had 200% of the “median” snowfall and we never lost service. The dish is HEATED. Unless you are online gaming you don’t even need what I get as SOP. You can stream on 3 TVs with less than 20 down.
AND Starlink will have rural cell service through T-Mobile as soon as the new satellites get up in numbers.
I was never a Musk fanboy, until the last 2 months of extensive research. Although he didn’t start Tesla, he bought in early then took over their management and production. Tesla would never have made it without the $8K per car US subsidies and the sale of CAFE 0 MPG subsidies, BUT what a business man does is use all available resources. Google Musk sleeping on the factory floor during problems with the 3 model production.
I will be going to South Padre Island to hopefully see a Starship launch in April. I will try to meet a SpaceX employee or two to attempt to buy some stock, since it is not listed and impossible for just anyone to buy. Then on to Cape Canaveral to hopefully see launches there, of Falcon, ULS and/or Blue Origin.
Musk built SpaceX and Starlink from the ground up starting with his own money. Now look at what HE accomplished. First private company to supply the ISS in 2012, First private company to develop an NASA approved space capsule and send NASA astronauts to space and the ISS, in 2020, and still the ONLY non Russian entity to do so. First company to send and entirely private crew to the ISS. Heck, SpaceX has its own astronaut academy. SpaceX Starship was picked to be the only Lunar Lander. (Before Brandon) Then Bezos got the Democrats in congress to give Blue Origin 3 BILLION dollars as a “second option”.
Falcon 9 Block 5, the “NASA approved human space flight version” is the only currently produced Falcon 9. At least 2 boosters have flown 19 times including the launch last night at Vandenburg. Current count, 312 launches, 276 landings and 247 reflights. Last failed launch was in 2015! The last landing failure was in 2021, although they have had a couple of landed rockets damaged on drone ships due to rough seas.
Nuralink, which he did not start but bought and took over, has now implanted their device into the brain of a quadriplegic who can now control a mouse with the product.
And the least successful of his current businesses.
Solar City which he overpaid his cousins for.
And finally the Boring Company, which IS building out an underground transportation system in Las Vegas, It is “supposed to” develop a boring machine and tunnel lining system that is much faster than current methods. And like Starlink income supporting Starship development and current Falcon launches, using the Boring transportation system to purchase Tesla cars as the transportation. I think once SpaceX has most of their engineering development for the Starship and the Raptor engine worked out, Musk will move the great engineers he has at Hayward and Boca Chica toward solving the design problems at Boring.
So as to your 2030, just short sighted BS IMHO. Heck, SpaceX MAY land a crewed starship on the moon before NASA does. If TRUMP! is reelected, Katie bar the doors on the space race potential of SpaceX/Musk.
“So as to your 2030, just short sighted BS IMHO.”
Is that you, Elon?
Really funny, NOT.
I know you lean liberal and, as you well know, closedmindedness is the No.1 characteristic of the modern “liberal”. So your comment makes perfect sense.
NOW as to Elon ALWAYS thinking he will achieve his goals sooner than he actually does, OPTIMISM and setting goals are incredibly important in advancement, especially where engineering is concerned.
J Kennedy, 9-12-1926
I mean, why would liberals think spending ANYTHING on mitigation would be useful when they can spend TRILLIONS on make work projects that benefit their oligarchs? And those unreliable forms of electricity generation will only last 15 years before needing to be replaced, will always require FF or Nuclear “backup” and will not SOLVE any “problem”.
BTW I forgot the purchase of Twitter and his ownership of the now free speech planform X. Even with all of Madison Avenue and the US government plotting against X getting any of ‘their” advertising dollars, X is now going up in usage numbers, and income.
As Taylor says:
1962 of course.
Am I the only fan here of For All Mankind?
One key premise of the story is the space race with the Soviets was a part of the greater cold war competition between East and West. Thus in the alternative timeline of the series, both the US and USSR had permanent moon bases in the 1970s.
In the later seasons, the private sector takes much of the initiative.
There is a good reason that the TV series For All Mankind is classified as science fiction.
Science fiction? No
shitfooling?The point is the Cold War was the incentive for the space race and competition with the Soviets was the reason we went to the moon.
Once the US left ahead in space and the USSR backed down, we no longer had the incentive to pursue manned space exploration like we used to.
So . . . what has changed since we beat the USSR to the Moon . . . what is the (different) incentive we have now that we supposedly didn’t have back then that is so compelling we need to return humans to the Moon in the next decade?
And please don’t offer up the old whipping horse that we need it to be a “stepping stone” to Mars . . . please!
The incentive now is from private industry. There will be private companies putting up their own space stations in LOE within 2 years. WE know almost nothing of what has been developed in the “micro gravity” of the ISS. The companies have a reason for spending their own money to manufacture in LEO.
The NASA moon program is mostly just a way to use up the left over shuttle engines and solid boosters. And to put US astronauts, especially POC, females and at least one Canadian, on the moon. BUT once the Starship is running, there will be no need for the NASA SLS rocket. Just as well since all the old shuttle engines will be expended.
Now if you have ever read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, you might have a clue as to the creation of the US Space Force and the importance of the US getting back to the moon, FIRST. Although the last 15 years seem to show the US as just another country that cares nothing about right and wrong, I think the last 3 + years of Brandon and the obvious corruption of the CIA, FBI, DOJ and local prosecutors and liberal judges at all levels MAY swing the pendulum back towards “Christian” values.
Speaking of Christian “values”, there is nothing in the New Testament saying that Jesus Christ ever mentioned humans walking on the Moon or traveling into space.
Can someone tell me how long (from launch to landing) this trip took?
7 Days, 16 hours 25 minutes, more or less.
Launch on SpaceX Falcon 9 Block 5 at 2-15-2024 01:05 ET to landing on 2-22-2024 at approximately 17:30 ET.
I watched an interesting show on NASA TV about the Apollo landings, and it explained why they could continue to add more to each moon mission.
NASA was very conservative on every step for reserve fuels etc. and thus, as they determined they had excess capacity, they just continued to add mass to the launches.
After it crashed why didn’t it catch fire?
Not enough lithium batteries?
That would be the, um, short of it.
Conquering space seems so aggressive. Can’t we just visit it?
You mean at the risk of the Borg assimilating you or me???
Naw . . . far better to boldly go where no man has gone before armed with phasers and photon torpedoes.
**** Breaking News ***
This just released from Intuitive Machines:
first message decoded from our tipped over Odysseus lander that was contained in the first 1 KB of TLM data, which took 20 hours to transmit through lander’s omni antenna:
“Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”
The leg struts should have extended to the top of the lander. If the lander experienced any lateral motion upon contacting the surface, it was at risk of toppling over. However, if the leg struts had reached the top, it would have allowed the lander to slide on the surface instead.
Two points: 1) NASA fulfilled its purpose with the moon landings back in the 70s. There is no reason for it to exist anymore, especially in the new “woke” incredibly bureaucratic version. Why are we spending tax dollars on it?
2) I have not seen any mention of the purpose of the Odysseus landing. Does it have one?
Answers to both of your questions are readily available via Web search.
I’ll just point out this one specific link that addresses both, titled “Why We Are Going”:
https://www.intuitivemachines.com/im-1?lightbox=dataItem-ls22wsqq8
Announced just today (Feb 28):
“Odysseus has sent back more that 15 MB of data . . .”
source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/odysseus-moon-lander-put-to-sleep-lunar-night/
Wow! Since it’s been been right at 6 days since Odysseus “landed” on the Moon’s surface on Feb.22, that’s an average telemetry data rate of 0.03 KB/sec, not even the old telephone modem data rate.
Both NASA and Intuitive Machines must be “Oh, so proud” of this declared-successful mission.
Let’s hope that the planned first human landing on the Moon coming up it 3-6 years, using the SpaceX Starship HLS derivative spaceship, doesn’t have such a “successful”, tipped-over landing.
ROTFL.