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US Moon landing updates: Intuitive Machines, on Friday, became the first private organisation in the world to ace Moon landing with its uncrewed autonomous lander 'Odysseus'. The spacecraft touched down on the lunar surface, marking a phenomenal milestone for the United States as the country looks to restart its Moon missions after over 50 years since the Apollo program.
The mission dubbed as 'IM-1' is Intuitive Machines' first mission through NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. This initiative is a key part of NASA's Artemis program and is aimed at collaboration with American companies to deliver payloads to the Moon's surface and lunar orbit - a larger goal towards fostering a "lunar economy."
Things to know about Odysseus spacecraft and its mission:
1) Odysseus landed near Malapert A in the South Pole region of the Moon. It was launched at 1:05 a.m. on February 15, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
2) The lander is carrying six NASA scientific and technology payloads to conduct different missions on the lunar surface, for which the US space agency has paid $118 million to Intuitive Machines. Odysseus will conduct experiments for NASA and other commercial customers for seven days.
Role on NASA payloads aboard Odysseus
3)These payloads include LN-1 (Lunar Node 1 Navigation Demonstrator), NDL (Navigation Doppler Lidar for Precise Velocity and Range Sensing), RFMG (Radio Frequency Mass Gauge), ROLSES (Radio-wave Observations at the Lunar Surface of the Photoelectron Sheath), and SCALPSS (Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies). The sixth payload 'LRA' (Laser Retroreflector Array) cannot conduct any operations in transit and is a passive experiment designed for the surface, NASA said. The payloads will provide data on the Moon's environment and navigation, measuring distance and other things to help in the future missions of astronauts on the Moon.
Where did Odysseus lander touchdown on Moon
4) The landing site - Malapert A -is a 24-kilometre-diameter crater in the Malapert region in the Moon's south pole. Notably, the south pole region is illuminated at low angles and some places experience little to no sunlight, becoming a key challenge for the spacecraft to achieve successful landing here.
5) Part of Odysseus' mission was to deploy a camera-equipped instrument, 'CubeSat', nicknamed EagleCam, about 100 metres above the Moon's surface. Intuitive Machines, in a post on 'X', also informed that Odysseus has begun to send data, and the work is under progress to get the first images from the lunar surface.
