Wednesday, March 13, 2024

JPL Continues Its Attempt to Restore Normal Communications with One of Humanity's Two Interstellar Probes...

An artist's concept of a Voyager probe traveling through deep space.
Caltech / NASA - JPL

NASA Engineers Make Progress Toward Understanding Voyager 1 Issue (News Release)

Since November 2023, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has been sending a steady radio signal to Earth, but the signal does not contain usable data. The source of the issue appears to be with one of three onboard computers, the flight data subsystem (FDS), which is responsible for packaging the science and engineering data before it’s sent to Earth by the telemetry modulation unit.

On March 3, the Voyager mission team saw activity from one section of the FDS that differed from the rest of the computer’s unreadable data stream. The new signal was still not in the format used by Voyager 1 when the FDS is working properly, so the team wasn’t initially sure what to make of it.

But an engineer with the agency’s Deep Space Network, which operates the radio antennas that communicate with both Voyagers and other spacecraft traveling to the Moon and beyond, was able to decode the new signal and found that it contains a readout of the entire FDS memory.

The FDS memory includes its code, or instructions for what to do, as well as variables, or values used in the code that can change based on commands or the spacecraft’s status. It also contains science or engineering data for downlink.

The team will compare this readout to the one that came down before the issue arose and look for discrepancies in the code and the variables to potentially find the source of the ongoing issue.

This new signal resulted from a command sent to Voyager 1 on March 1. Called a “poke” by the team, the command is meant to gently prompt the FDS to try different sequences in its software package in case the issue could be resolved by going around a corrupted section.

Because Voyager 1 is more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, it takes 22.5 hours for a radio signal to reach the spacecraft and another 22.5 hours for the probe’s response to reach antennas on the ground. So the team received the results of the command on March 3.

On March 7, engineers began working to decode the data, and on March 10, they determined that it contains a memory readout.

The team is analyzing the readout. Using that information to devise a potential solution and attempt to put it into action will take time.

Source: NASA.Gov

Saturday, March 09, 2024

A Time Capsule Will Soon Be Ready for Its Trip to the Outer Solar System This October...

The inner side of the vault plate (which will bear the microchip containing the names of 2.6 million people) that will be attached to the Europa Clipper spacecraft before it launches to Jupiter's icy moon Europa about seven months from now.
NASA / JPL - Caltech

NASA Unveils Design for Message Heading to Jupiter’s Moon Europa (News Release - March 8)

When it launches in October, the agency’s Europa Clipper spacecraft will carry a richly-layered dispatch that includes more than 2.6 million names submitted by the public.

Following in NASA’s storied tradition of sending inspirational messages into space, the agency has special plans for Europa Clipper, which later this year will launch towards Jupiter’s moon Europa. The moon shows strong evidence of an ocean under its icy crust, with more than twice the amount of water of all of Earth’s oceans combined.

A triangular metal plate on the spacecraft will honor that connection to Earth in several ways.

At the heart of the artifact is an engraving of U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón’s handwritten In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa, along with a silicon microchip stenciled with more than 2.6 million names submitted by the public. The microchip will be the centerpiece of an illustration of a bottle amid the Jovian system – a reference to NASA’s “Message in a Bottle” campaign, which invited the public to send their names with the spacecraft.

A ‘Golden Record’ for Europa

Made of the metal tantalum and about 7 by 11 inches (18 by 28 centimeters), the plate features graphic elements on both sides. The outward-facing panel features art that highlights Earth’s connection to Europa.

Linguists collected recordings of the word “water” spoken in 103 languages, from families of languages around the world. The audio files were converted into waveforms (visual representations of sound waves) and etched into the plate.

The waveforms radiate out from a symbol representing the American Sign Language sign for “water.” To hear audio of the spoken languages and see the sign, go to: go.nasa.gov/MakeWaves.

In the spirit of the Voyager spacecraft’s Golden Record, which carries sounds and images to convey the richness and diversity of life on Earth, the layered message on Europa Clipper aims to spark the imagination and offer a unifying vision.

“The content and design of Europa Clipper’s vault plate are swimming with meaning,” said Lori Glaze, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The plate combines the best humanity has to offer across the universe – science, technology, education, art and math. The message of connection through water, essential for all forms of life as we know it, perfectly illustrates Earth’s tie to this mysterious ocean world we are setting out to explore.”

Reaching Out to the Cosmos

In 2030, after a 1.6-billion-mile (2.6-billion-kilometer) journey, Europa Clipper will begin orbiting Jupiter, making 49 close flybys of Europa. To determine if there are conditions that could support life, the spacecraft’s powerful suite of science instruments will gather data about the moon’s subsurface ocean, icy crust, thin atmosphere and space environment.

The electronics for those instruments are housed in a massive metal vault designed to protect them from Jupiter’s punishing radiation. The commemorative plate will seal an opening in the vault.

Because searching for habitable conditions is central to the mission, the Drake Equation is etched onto the plate as well – on the inward-facing side. Astronomer Frank Drake developed the mathematical formulation in 1961 to estimate the possibility of finding advanced civilizations beyond Earth.

The equation has inspired and guided research in astrobiology and related fields ever since.

In addition, artwork on the inward-facing side of the plate will include a reference to the radio frequencies considered plausible for interstellar communication, symbolizing how humanity uses this radio band to listen for messages from the cosmos. These particular frequencies match the radio waves emitted in space by the components of water and are known by astronomers as the “water hole.”

On the plate, the frequencies are depicted as radio emission lines.

Finally, the plate includes a portrait of one of the founders of planetary science, Ron Greeley, whose early efforts to develop a Europa mission two decades ago laid the foundation for Europa Clipper.

“We’ve packed a lot of thought and inspiration into this plate design, as we have into this mission itself,” says Project Scientist Robert Pappalardo of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “It’s been a decades-long journey, and we can’t wait to see what Europa Clipper shows us at this water world.”

Once assembly of Europa Clipper has been completed at JPL, the spacecraft will be shipped to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida in preparation for its October launch.

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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Friday, March 08, 2024

A Random Post About My Favorite Sitcom...

A screenshot from THE BIG BANG THEORY - Episode 9.4: 'The 2003 Approximation' (Original Air Date: October 12, 2015).

So last night, I had two dreams where I hung out with The Big Bang Theory's awesome gang of nerds at Stuart's comic book shop, The Comic Center of Pasadena!

In the first dream, I recall buying two issues for Image Comics characters that don't actually exist in real life. In case you've never heard of Image Comics before and don't feel like clicking on the link above, this company was big in the 1990s (briefly surpassing Marvel Comics in popularity)—producing such superhero titles as Spawn, Youngblood, Wetworks, Stormwatch, ShadowHawk, WildC.A.T.S and much more.

Anyways, the second dream was not as carefree, but a lot more exciting... Everyone at the shop had to seek shelter inside a panic room underneath Stuart's store after a bunch of Mafia goons, who Stuart apparently had past business dealings with, arrived with guns drawn to lay waste to The Comic Center!

I woke up before the goons actually began firing. What the heck, Stuart?! Heh.

The irony of dreaming that I chilled at The Big Bang Theory's comic book store last night is that I actually got to work as a background actor inside my favorite sitcom's comic book shop (which was a setpiece built inside Soundstage 25 at Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank) in real life 9 years ago!

The screenshot above is from the 2015 episode "The 2003 Approximation." That's Season 9, Episode 4 of The Big Bang Theory if you wanna stream it on Max or something.

Happy Friday!

Wednesday, March 06, 2024

America's Next Jupiter-bound Orbiter Spreads One of Its Wings in Florida...

One of the Europa Clipper's twin solar array wings is deployed inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida...on March 6, 2024.
NASA / Ben Smegelsky

Europa Clipper Solar Wing Deployment (Photo Release)

Technicians working inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida unfolded and fully extended the first of two five-panel solar arrays built for NASA’s Europa Clipper in preparation for inspection and cleaning as part of assembly, test and launch operations on Wednesday, March 6, 2024.

When both solar arrays are installed and deployed on Europa Clipper – the agency’s largest spacecraft ever developed for a planetary mission – the spacecraft will span a total length of more than 100 feet and weigh 7,145 pounds without the inclusion of propellants.

Source: NASA.Gov

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Technicians inspect one of the Europa Clipper's twin solar array wings after it is deployed inside the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida...on March 6, 2024.
NASA / Ben Smegelsky

An artist's concept of NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft flying above Jupiter's icy moon Europa.
NASA / JPL - Caltech

Monday, March 04, 2024

A New Discovery at Jupiter's Most Famous Ocean Moon Bodes Well for the Europa Clipper Mission...

An image of Jupiter's icy moon Europa that was taken by NASA's Juno spacecraft from a distance of 220 miles (354 kilometers)...on September 29, 2022.
Image data: NASA / JPL - Caltech / SwRI / MSSS Image processing: Kevin M. Gill CC BY 3.0

NASA’s Juno Mission Measures Oxygen Production at Europa (News Release)

The ice-covered Jovian moon generates 1,000 tons of oxygen every 24 hours – enough to keep a million humans breathing for a day.

Scientists with NASA’s Juno mission to Jupiter have calculated the rate of oxygen being produced at the Jovian moon Europa to be substantially less than most previous studies. Published on March 4 in Nature Astronomy, the findings were derived by measuring hydrogen outgassing from the icy moon’s surface using data collected by the spacecraft’s Jovian Auroral Distributions Experiment (JADE) instrument.

The paper’s authors estimate that the amount of oxygen produced to be around 26 pounds every second (12 kilograms per second). Previous estimates range from a few pounds to over 2,000 pounds per second (over 1,000 kilograms per second).

Scientists believe that some of the oxygen produced in this manner could work its way into the moon’s subsurface ocean as a possible source of metabolic energy.

With an equatorial diameter of 1,940 miles (3,100 kilometers), Europa is the fourth largest of Jupiter’s 95 known moons and the smallest of the four Galilean satellites. Scientists believe that a vast internal ocean of salty water lurks beneath its icy crust, and they are curious about the potential for life-supporting conditions to exist below the surface.

It is not just the water that has astrobiologists’ attention: The Jovian moon’s location plays an important role in biological possibilities as well. Europa’s orbit places it right in the middle of the gas giant’s radiation belts.

Charged, or ionized, particles from Jupiter bombard the icy surface, splitting water molecules in two to generate oxygen that might find its way into the moon’s ocean.

“Europa is like an ice ball slowly losing its water in a flowing stream. Except, in this case, the stream is a fluid of ionized particles swept around Jupiter by its extraordinary magnetic field,” said JADE scientist Jamey Szalay from Princeton University in New Jersey. “When these ionized particles impact Europa, they break up the water-ice molecule by molecule on the surface to produce hydrogen and oxygen. In a way, the entire ice shell is being continuously eroded by waves of charged particles washing up upon it.”

Capturing the Bombardment

As Juno flew within 220 miles (354 kilometers) of Europa at 2:36 p.m. PDT on September 29, 2022, JADE identified and measured hydrogen and oxygen ions that had been created by the bombarding charged particles and then “picked up” by Jupiter’s magnetic field as it swept past the moon.

“Back when NASA’s Galileo mission flew by Europa, it opened our eyes to the complex and dynamic interaction Europa has with its environment. Juno brought a new capability to directly measure the composition of charged particles shed from Europa’s atmosphere, and we couldn’t wait to further peek behind the curtain of this exciting water world,” said Szalay. “But what we didn’t realize is that Juno’s observations would give us such a tight constraint on the amount of oxygen produced in Europa’s icy surface.”

Juno carries 11 state-of-the-art science instruments designed to study the Jovian system, including nine charged-particle and electromagnetic-wave sensors for studying Jupiter’s magnetosphere.

“Our ability to fly close to the Galilean satellites during our extended mission allowed us to start tackling a breadth of science, including some unique opportunities to contribute to the investigation of Europa’s habitability,” said Scott Bolton, Juno’s principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “And we’re not done yet. More moon flybys and the first exploration of Jupiter’s close ring and polar atmosphere are yet to come.”

Oxygen production is one of many facets that NASA’s Europa Clipper mission will investigate when it arrives at Jupiter in 2030. The mission has a sophisticated payload of nine science instruments to determine if Europa has conditions that could be suitable for life.

Now Bolton and the rest of the Juno mission team are setting their sights on another Jovian world, the volcano-festooned moon Io. On April 9, the spacecraft will come within about 10,250 miles (16,500 kilometers) of its surface.

The data that Juno gathers will add to findings from past Io flybys, including two extremely close approaches of about 932 miles (1,500 kilometers) on December 30, 2023, and February 3, 2024.

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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An artist's concept of NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft flying above Jupiter's icy moon Europa.
NASA / JPL - Caltech

Thursday, February 29, 2024

Goodnight, Odysseus... Thanks for Putting My Message on the Moon!

A photo of Intuitive Machines' Odysseus lander on the surface of the Moon.
Intuitive Machines

Happy Leap Day, everyone! Just thought I'd share these images that were released by Intuitive Machines this week as its Odysseus ('Odie') lunar lander was put to sleep due to low battery power today...nevertheless completing the successful seven-day IM-1 mission.

This mission was very significant to me. To NASA, this was the United States' first landing on the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. To the burgeoning commercial space industry, this was the first privately-built spacecraft to successfully touch down on the lunar surface.

And to myself, Odie's accomplishment marked the conclusion of me waiting around 15 years for a lander mission to come along that would put my virtual presence on the surface of the Moon! NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter—which bears a microchip containing my name as well as those of 1.6 million other people—has been revolving around Earth's natural satellite since June of 2009.

But it wouldn't be till IM-1 this month that my dream of looking up at the Moon and thinking about how I had a presence intact on its surface, courtesy of a Lunagram message (shown at the very bottom of this Blog entry) that I submitted to a company named Lunaprise back on Christmas Day of 2020, became a reality.

Much thanks to Intuitive Machines, NASA (whose Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative for the Artemis program made IM-1 a reality), SpaceX (which flawlessly launched Odie to the Moon on February 15), Lunaprise and the Arch Mission Foundation (which helped provide the NanoFiche disc that contains Lunagrams as well as the Arch Mission's Lunar Library) for giving me the opportunity to be a part of this historic endeavor!

There are other Moon-bound spacecraft, such as NASA's VIPER rover and Firefly's Blue Ghost lander, that will hopefully bring my presence to other locales on the lunar surface over the next two years. But it will be Odysseus, just like NASA's Phoenix lander (which was the first robotic probe to land my name on Mars back in 2008), that will be the lunar explorer I'm most fond of.

Ad Lunam.

A photo of the NanoFiche disc, which contains my Lunagram as part of the Arch Mission Foundation's Lunar Library, attached to the Odysseus lander.
Intuitive Machines

A photo of the Odysseus lander, with the NanoFiche disc attached to its side, before the spacecraft was encapsulated by the twin payload fairings of its SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
SpaceX

This final photo that was transmitted by Odysseus to Earth on February 29, 2024, shows the spacecraft as it descended towards the lunar surface for a landing...on February 22, 2024.

The NanoFiche disc is visible above one of Odysseus' landing legs as the spacecraft touched down on the Moon...on February 22, 2024. The rough landing damaged the leg to the left.
Intuitive Machines

My Lunagram message (with most of its details blurred out) that's now on the surface of the Moon...thanks to the Odysseus spacecraft and the Lunar Library aboard it.

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

A Major Milestone Has Been Reached for NASA's First Artemis Rover...

At NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, the VIPER lunar rover is more than 80% complete...as of February 28, 2024.
NASA

Mission Manager Update: All VIPER Flight Instruments Installed! (News Release)

The VIPER team continues to push forward with the build of the flight rover that’ll go to the surface of the Moon. As of this writing, all of VIPER’s flight instruments are installed, and the rover is more than 80% built!

This is a major accomplishment and shows the great progress being made by the dedicated VIPER team, who are excited to see the rover coming together.

What comes next – the confirmational tests of the rover – will strengthen our confidence in the rover’s ability to survive launch, landing and the challenging environment of the lunar South Pole.

For example, as we assemble and install various subsystems onto the rover, we also perform channelization tests. Channelization tests let us confirm that through our design and build of the rover system – from piece-parts to cable harnesses and connectors, and mechanical installation activities, and even through avionics software – the connections all work.

Now, you might think, “Of course what we installed should work!” but it’s important to remember how complicated these space systems are (and planetary rover systems in particular).

An example of an upcoming channelization test for VIPER is to command the flight vehicle’s high-gain antenna to move in a particular way: Does it actually move in the correct direction and to the correct position? Sometimes we will perform even more complex tests, like sending a command to the NIRVSS instrument to take an image: Is the image taken successful? Is the field of view of the image correct? Did the image make its way into the rover’s avionics for downlink?

We make these determinations now because we don’t want to discover any issues later in the assembly flow that could result in us needing to perform some disassembly to correct matters.

So we test as we go, to decrease risk later when we’re performing whole-rover environmental tests. This way if the rover doesn’t work as expected after one of VIPER’s environmental tests, we know it once worked fine, and that can help us more quickly problem-solve what might have gone wrong.

The pace in which we’ve been working through the build and subsystem checkouts has been blistering lately, and we’ve had a good run of successes.

Go VIPER!

– Dan Andrews, VIPER Project Manager

Source: NASA.Gov

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

The Power Source for America's Next Jupiter-bound Orbiter Has Arrived in Florida...

A solar array panel for NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft undergoes processing at Kennedy Space Center's Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility in Florida...on February 27, 2024.
NASA / Leejay Lockhart

NASA’s Europa Clipper Solar Array Hoist at Kennedy Space Center (Photo Release)

Technicians hoist a five-panel solar array protected by a lid for NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft at the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, February 27, 2024. The arrays are each 46.5 feet long (14.2 meters).

With both solar arrays deployed, Europa Clipper will span more than 100 feet long, about the length of a basketball court. The solar arrays power the spacecraft so that it can study Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, which is more than five times as far from the Sun as the Earth.

Launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket is no earlier than October 2024.

Source: NASA.Gov

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A solar array panel for NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft undergoes processing at Kennedy Space Center's Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility in Florida...on February 27, 2024.
NASA / Leejay Lockhart

An artist's concept of NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft flying above Jupiter's icy moon Europa.
NASA / JPL - Caltech

Friday, February 23, 2024

ODYSSEUS HAS A NEW HOME! But Photos of the Spacecraft on the Lunar Surface Have Not Been Released Yet...

Intuitive Machines' Odysseus lander took this image of the Moon from an altitude of 10 kilometers (6 miles) and a distance of 200 kilometers (125 miles) from the intended landing site...on February 22, 2024.

NASA Tech Contributes to Soft Moon Landing, Agency Science Underway (News Release)

For the first time in more than 50 years, new NASA science instruments and technology demonstrations are operating on the Moon following the first successful delivery of the agency’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative.

Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander, called Odysseus, completed a seven-day journey to lunar orbit and executed procedures to softly land near Malapert A in the South Pole region of the Moon at 5:24 p.m. CST on February 22. The lander is healthy, collecting solar power and transmitting data back to the company’s mission control in Houston.

The mission marks the first commercial uncrewed landing on the Moon.

Carrying six NASA science research and technology demonstrations, among other customer payloads, all NASA science instruments completed transit checkouts en route to the Moon. A NASA precision landing technology demonstration also provided critical last-minute assistance to ensure a soft landing.

As part of NASA’s Artemis campaign, the lunar delivery is in the region where NASA will send astronauts to search for water and other lunar resources later this decade.

“For the first time in more than half a century, America returned to the Moon. Congratulations to Intuitive Machines for placing the lunar lander Odysseus carrying NASA scientific instruments to a place no person or machine has gone before, the lunar South Pole,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “This feat from Intuitive Machines, SpaceX and NASA demonstrates the promise of American leadership in space and the power of commercial partnerships under NASA’s CLPS initiative. Further, this success opens the door for new voyages under Artemis to send astronauts to the Moon, then onward to Mars.”

During the journey to the Moon, NASA instruments measured the quantity of cryogenic engine fuel as it has been used, and while descending towards the lunar surface, teams collected data on plume-surface interactions and tested precision landing technologies.

Odysseus’ surface operations are underway and expected to take place through Thursday, February 29.

New lunar science, technology

NASA’s Navigation Doppler Lidar for Precise Velocity and Range Sensing (NDL) guidance system for descent and landing ultimately played a key role in aiding the successful landing. A few hours ahead of landing, Intuitive Machines encountered a sensor issue with their navigation system and leaned on NASA’s guidance system for an assist to precisely land.

NASA’s instrument operates on the same principles of radar and uses pulses from a laser emitted through three optical telescopes. It measures speed, direction and altitude with high precision during descent and touchdown.

“We are thrilled to have NASA on the Moon again, and proud of the agency’s contribution to the successful landing with our NDL technology. Congratulations for completing this first lunar delivery for NASA, paving the way for a bright future for our CLPS initiative,” said Nicky Fox. “Some of the NASA science instruments on this mission will bring us insight on lunar plume interactions and conduct radio astronomy. The valiant efforts and innovation demonstrated by Intuitive Machines is exemplary and we are excited for the upcoming lunar deliveries that will follow this first mission.”

Now that they are on the lunar surface, NASA instruments will focus on investigating lunar surface interactions and radio astronomy. The Odysseus lander also carries a retroreflector array that will contribute to a network of location markers on the Moon for communication and navigation for future autonomous navigation technologies.

Additional NASA hardware aboard the lander includes:

-- Lunar Node 1 Navigation Demonstrator: A small, CubeSat-sized experiment that will demonstrate autonomous navigation that could be used by future landers, surface infrastructure and astronauts, digitally confirming their positions on the Moon relative to other spacecraft, ground stations or rovers on the move.

-- Laser Retroreflector Array: A collection of eight retroreflectors that enable precision laser ranging, which is a measurement of the distance between the orbiting or landing spacecraft to the reflector on the lander. The array is a passive optical instrument and will function as a permanent location marker on the Moon for decades to come.

-- Radio Frequency Mass Gauge: A technology demonstration that measures the amount of propellant in spacecraft tanks in a low-gravity space environment. Using sensor technology, the gauge will measure the amount of cryogenic propellant in Nova-C’s fuel and oxidizer tanks, providing data that could help predict fuel usage on future missions.

-- Radio-wave Observations at the Lunar Surface of the Photoelectron Sheath: The instrument will observe the Moon’s surface environment in radio frequencies, to determine how natural and human-generated activity near the surface interacts with and could interfere with science conducted there.

-- Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies: A suite of four tiny cameras to capture imagery showing how the Moon’s surface changes from interactions with the spacecraft’s engine plume during and after descent.

NASA is committed to supporting its U.S. commercial vendors as they navigate the challenges of sending science and technology to the surface of the Moon.

“In daring to confront one of humanity’s greatest challenges, Intuitive Machines created an entire lunar program that has ventured farther than any American mission to land on the Moon in over 50 years,” said Altemus. “This humbling moment reminds us that pursuing the extraordinary requires both boldness and resilience.”

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Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Odysseus Has Arrived at the Moon!

An image that Intuitive Machines' Odysseus lander took as it orbited 92 kilometers (57 miles) above the Moon...following a successful Lunar Orbit Insertion burn on February 21, 2024.

Earlier today, Intuitive Machines' (IM) Odysseus spacecraft fired its main engine and successfully conducted a 408-second-long Lunar Orbit Insertion burn...allowing the robotic lander to be captured by the Moon's gravity after a week-long voyage from Earth. With the nearly 7-minute-long maneuver accomplished, Odysseus is now orbiting 92 kilometers (57 miles) above the lunar surface!

This orbit is obviously temporary as Odysseus—whose technical name is Nova-C—prepares to conduct its challenging lunar landing attempt Thursday afternoon. The time of touchdown on the Moon is set for 2:30 PM, PST (4:30 PM, CST)...which is earlier than the original landing time of 2:49 PM, PST (4:49 PM, CST) that was announced by Intuitive Machines two days ago.

Intuitive Machines shared these three photos taken by Odysseus as it closed in on the Moon since Tuesday night. It's going to be thrilling to see other pictures that IM will share through tomorrow morning—before Nova Control in Houston, Texas, focuses on successfully guiding Odysseus to the surface near the Moon's Malapert A crater.

Godspeed, Nova-C! Have a safe journey to the lunar South Pole tomorrow!

An image of the Moon that the Odysseus lander took with its Terrain Relative Navigation camera...from 100,000 kilometers (62,150 miles) away.
Intuitive Machines

An image of the Moon's Bel'kovich K crater that was taken by Odysseus' Terrain Relative Navigation camera...following the successful Lunar Orbit Insertion burn on February 21, 2024.