“Today, for the first time in half a century, America returned to the Moon. On the eighth day of a quarter-million-mile journey, Intuitive Machines achieved a landing like never before. What a feat for Intuitive Machines, SpaceX and NASA. What a triumph for humanity. Odysseus conquered.” – Bill Nelson, administrator, was happy.
Great success for the USA. Has become! Americans returned to the Moon
Intuitive Machines of Houston, Texas, announced on Friday, February 23, that the spacecraft Odysseus had safely landed on the lunar surface and made contact with . The landing took place around 12 p.m. Polish time. The mission was prepared at the request of NASA as part of the commercial cooperation program.
It is the first successful American lunar mission in 50 years, and the first time in history that a private company has landed on the Silver Globe. Americans last landed on the Moon during a mission in 1972. Since then, Japan and India have arrived there.
The mission could have ended in failure. She was saved by chance
The private Odyseusz lander was launched into space on February 15 as part of the IM-1 mission. It launched from the Kennedy Space Center on , and communication with the lander was conducted through the Houston space center.
describes that complications occurred during the mission and its ultimate success was at risk. Even before the lander began lowering, Odysseus’s ranging lasers, which calculate the ship’s altitude and speed, were not working, so landing without them would be virtually impossible. However, NASA engineers managed to connect to navigation devices and use experimental lasers. Interestingly, the lander during this mission was only to test them, and no one assumed that they would be used at such a key moment in the mission. Ultimately, it was NASA’s secondary lidar that saved the mission.
Initially, when Odysseus landed on the moon, he did not receive any signal. “Minutes passed, there were a lot of nerves, but in the end we managed to establish a connection, although it was weak,” describes CNN. “After solving the communication problems, flight controllers confirmed that Odysseus is standing upright and starting to send data. We are currently working on sending the first photos from the lunar surface,” Intuitive Machines finally announced, which meant the mission was a success.
Americans will look for water on the Moon
The ship landed near the lunar south pole. There it will collect data to be used in organizing manned missions to the Moon. The mission is part of the project of the American space agency NASA called Artemis. Its goal is new research. “They are intended to help understand processes occurring in space and on planets, as well as to help in the search for water in the Universe,” NASA wrote in a press release.
Therefore, the target landing site was the cratered area next to the Malapert mountain complex. There are several deep craters in this region that never see sunlight because they are constantly in shadow. so they hope there may be frozen water inside. Americans hope that they will be able to transform ice into drinking water, which would make it easier to survive in space. They plan to send a human to the Silver Globe again later this decade.
Source: Gazeta
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