After several failed attempts by different companies, another has set its sights on the first commercial moon landing. The ‘Nova-C’ lander from the American company Intuitive Machines took off from the Cape Canaveral spaceport in the US state of Florida on Thursday.
The start, originally scheduled for Wednesday, was postponed to Thursday for technical reasons. The temperatures of the methane fuel deviated from the norm, NASA said in a statement. The means of transport was a ‘Falcon 9’ rocket from technology billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX company.
Moon landing scheduled for February 22
Despite the launch postponement, Intuitive Machines is still hoping for a moon landing on February 22. It would be the first – albeit unmanned – American moon landing since the Apollo missions more than 50 years ago and the first commercial landing in space history on Earth’s satellite.
The experiment is part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) program. With this program, the American space agency wants to collect as much knowledge as possible relatively cheaply and efficiently on its own way back to the moon by awarding contracts for moon landings to private companies and working with them.
The ‘Nova-C’ lander, nicknamed ‘Odysseus’, is about the size of an old-fashioned British telephone booth, has aluminum legs, weighs about 700 kilograms and can carry about 130 kilograms of cargo. NASA has used much of it for research equipment and other things, while commercial companies have secured the rest for their projects.
Lander is expected to operate for seven days
Odysseus is expected to land in a crater called Malapert A in the southern part of the moon. After a possible successful touchdown, the lander would be operational for approximately seven days, according to the manufacturers.
A landing on the moon is technically demanding
However, moon landings are technically considered extremely demanding and often go wrong. This year alone, two planned landings have turned out differently than hoped: the American company Astrobotic, based in Pittsburgh, shipped the ‘Peregrine’ capsule in January. Shortly after take-off, problems arose due to a malfunction in the propulsion system and the goal of landing on the moon had to be abandoned. A few days later, ‘Peregrine’ burned up in Earth’s atmosphere.
Shortly afterwards, the lander SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) from the Japanese space agency JAXA landed gently on the moon, but initially had problems with the energy supply. SLIM could only be put into use after days of power failure.
Source: Krone
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