More than 50 years later, history repeated itself again. In a moment of great joy, particularly for North Americans, the private module Odysseus, from Intuitive Machines, landed on lunar soil. The announcement was made this Thursday, February 22nd. Remember that the mission had started on the 15th (Saturday) of the same month.
The end result was successful, but there were also setbacks. According to Euronews, they even “sounded the alarms” due to the weak signal, in terms of communication. Still, despite these communication irregularities, the spacecraft successfully landed, vertically, on the surface of the Moon.
For now, all we know is that the Moon was reached. No great details are known about the specific landing site, as the main objective established for the mission would be to land near the lunar south pole.
This historic landing is full of firsts. For now, as previously mentioned, it was the first time, since more than 50 years ago, with NASA's Apollo missions, that a North American spacecraft set foot on the Moon. Furthermore, we are in the presence of history, in the sense that Intuitive Machines was the first private North American company to achieve this feat.
Odysseus carries a sculpture of 125 miniatures of the Moon
Illustrative Image (via Pexels)
Astrobotic Technology had already attempted to complete a similar feat, however, it ended up being unable to complete the mission. Despite this, the company did not hold back in praising Intuitive Machines, through the
As for Odysseus's stay on the Moon, it is expected that, as The Verge reports, it will operate for around 14 Earth days. Inside the ship, as Aroged reported, there is a work of art by Jeff Koons, which contains around 125 miniature sculptures of the Moon. In addition, Odysseus carries a CubeSat “EagleCam” camera system, which was built by students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, in the state of Florida.
Remember that the launch of Odysseus was driven by a SpaceX Falcon 9.