Uncrewed Moon landing this afternoon

A “soft” landing of an uncrewed vehicle, built by NASA in conjunction with a commercial company, will take place this afternoon: 5:30 4:24 p.m. EST Jim Batterson gives the details and links where you can watch/hear it live.  This landing has hardly been in the news, but it certainly deserves our attention.

NASA/Intuitive Machines -1 Landing on the Moon Thursday Afternoon

by Jim Batterson

NASA, in collaboration with Intuitive Machines, is scheduled to soft-land an uncrewed payload near the Moon’s South Pole at 5:30 4:24PM EST this afternoon [RESCHEDULED].  If successful, this will be the first U.S. soft landing on the moon since the final Apollo mission of the early 70’s.

The mission was launched last week on a Space-X Falcon rocket from Cape Kennedy and, after several successful mid-course maneuvers is, as of this morning, orbiting the moon just 57 miles above the Lunar surface.  About an hour before the planned landing, a series of onboard rocket motors are scheduled to fire and take it out of orbit to a steady one meter/secpmd touchdown on the Lunar surface. The lander will take photographs, make soil measurements, and carry out scientific experiments.  In carrying out this mission, U.S. capabilities in space are extended to a commercial company as a part of NASA’s efforts to support more robust launch and landing capabilities by the private sector and to test and validate—on uncrewed missions—new technologies that can be used in the Artemis human crews to the moon program.

As a part of NASA’s return to the moon for a planned permanent presence, the NASA Artemis Program is developing a heavy, crew-rated launch system.  Many of us watched a major uncrewed launch in that program a bit over a year ago as a huge rocket sent an Orion capsule, which will be used to fly and land a human crew on the moon in the next few years, around the moon and back to Earth with a successful splashdown and recovery.  It is my understanding that a post-flight review of the capsule’s heat shield showed excess sublimation (melting and conversion to gas) over what was expected and that resolution of this issue and other abnormalities may delay the crewed Artemis 2 launch and circumlunar trajectory currently planned for Fall 2025, which of course would impact the crewed Artemis 3 launch—one that will carry a crew and soft-land them on the Moon in Fall of 2026.  A Wikipedia listing of the currently planned Artemis Program missions through the mid-2030’s can be seen here.

This current mission, IM-1 (Intuitive Machines 1) is the second in a series of uncrewed Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) missions that support the development of technologies to be incorporated in the Artemis crewed missions.  CLPS is a NASA program that, as its name implies, enlists commercial vendors to build, integrate, and operate compact, uncrewed space missions to prepare hardware on a fast pace parallel with the development of the main Artemis Mission crewed landings on the moon.  The idea is that using several commercial vendors creates capacity and know-how more quickly and cheaply than doing in situ testing of new space technologies.

The first of the CLPS series, Peregrine One, experienced a failure after launch last month.  The next scheduled launch after IM-1 will be in the Fall of this year and will be operated by commercial vendor, Firefly Aerospace.  This current mission, operated by the commercial vendor, Intuitive Machines was launched early last Thursday morning and is scheduled to soft-land near the South Pole of the Moon this Thursday afternoon.

As of 0830 EST this morning, the vehicle is in a circular orbit 57 miles above the moon. About an hour before the planned 1730 EST landing on Thursday afternoon, retrorockets will elongate its orbit to 67mi x 6 mi with the 6 mile high point being just above the landing site.  When the orbit reaches the 6 mi altitude point, another retrorocket firing and braking will be started and the vehicle will drop down to a soft landing in the region of the South Lunar Pole with touchdown expected at 1730EST. . . if all goes well!  Live updates are provided at the Intuitive Machines mission website, where there’s a nice write-up and link to live coverage of landing, coverage that should start about one hour before the expected 1730EST touchdown on Space.com at the site below:

One last thought:  One factor prompting this U.S. project is a bit different than the main cold-war driver of the Apollo program in the 1960’s.  Then we had a single competitor, the USSR, but that was seen as a competition for technological success of a democracy versus a Communist dictatorship.  After World War II, nobody else had the economy and technology to attempt a feat like a manned moon landing.  Today there are five nations that have hit the moon: China, Russia, Japan, India, and the U.S.  (Only the U.S. has actually landed humans on the Moon.) It turns out that there are concerns about any of these nations claiming possession of locations and minerals via landing there.

Here’s Wikipedia’s rendering of the Nova-C lander on the surface of the Moon (from Wikipedia and the Smithsonian Institution)