February 22, 2024 made history as the day the United States somehow returned to the moon, thanks to the successful arrival of Intuitive Machines' private Odysseus lander. Overcoming a series of technical challenges, including a failed laser navigation system, the mission also effectively marked the beginning of the commercial era of lunar exploration.
Pioneering exploration
The Odysseus lander made the first U.S. moon landing since NASA's Apollo moonwalkers stepped onto the moon. A moon landing that, like others recently, it once again seemed destined for nothing. Despite initial communication difficulties, the flight control team worked tirelessly to establish stronger contact with the lander.
Perseverance paid off: after an almost interminable quarter of an hour, the lander's data began to flow, signaling the moon landing. The success of Odysseus will act as a catalyst for other nations and private companies, stimulating competition (I hope friendly, certainly lucrative, I fear predatory) in the space sector.
Odysseus: technology and marketing
And so in the end Odysseus turned out to be (partly surprisingly) a small engineering masterpiece. Standing 4,3 feet tall and supported by six feet, this carbon fiber and titanium lander was outfitted with six experiments for NASA under a $118 million contract to commercialize lunar deliveries in preparation for the return of the astronauts.
The landing point chosen for the lander is near the lunar south pole, about 300 kilometers away, in an area characterized by a relatively flat surface but surrounded by natural obstacles: boulders, hills, slopes and craters. The latter could contain frozen water, an element of great scientific interest and potential resource for future human missions. The lander was programmed to select in real time the safest spot for landing, near the so-called Malapert A crater, making it the closest landfall to the south pole ever attempted by a space mission.
The experiments on the lander
Among the experiments on board, we find advanced technologies and navigation systems provided by NASA, with the aim of testing new methodologies of precise landing and surface exploration. It is a private mission, however (it is appropriate to add "baby" here), and therefore Intuitive Machines has sold space on the lander to various private and academic bodies for the transport of scientific and marketing equipment. A sports jacket with a new fabric? 125 moon stickers of a pop artist? A nice bunch of cameras from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, designed to capture images of the landing? There's a bit of everything: sponsors want their share.
Odysseus is solar-powered and designed to operate for one lunar week, the equivalent of about 14 Earth days, before the long lunar night interrupts its operations. Let's see what comes of it.
The future of lunar exploration after this lander
As we celebrate this milestone, Intuitive Machines and the global community are already looking to the future. With the moon offering unlimited potential for scientific research, resource extraction and as a launching pad for missions further out into space, the Odysseus landing marks just the beginning.
The human ambition to explore space is more alive than ever, and the moon remains a key target in this ongoing journey into the unknown.
