Intuitive Machines 1 (Odysseus)

Description

The Intuitive Machines 1 (IM-1, TO2-IM) mission objective was to place a NOVA-C lander, called Odysseus, at crater Malapert A near the south pole of the Moon. The commercially built lander carried five NASA payloads and commercial cargo. The scientific objectives of the mission included studies of plume-surface interactions, radio astronomy, and space weather interactions with the lunar surface. It was also to be demonstrating precision landing technologies and communication and navigation node capabilities. IM-1 was selected through NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, in which NASA contracts with a commercial partner, in this case Intuitive Machines, that provides the launch and lander.

Spacecraft and Subsytems

The Odysseus Lander is a hexagonal cylinder, 4.0 meters tall and 1.57 meters wide, on 6 landing legs with a launch mass of 1908 kg. It is capable of carrying approximately 100 kg of payload to the surface. It uses solar panels to generate 200 W of power on the surface, using a 25 amp-hr battery and a 28 VDC system. Propulsion and landing use liquid methane as fuel and liquid oxygen as an oxidizer powering a 3100 N main engine mounted on the bottom of the lander. Communications are via S-band. The NASA payload includes the Laser Retro-Reflector Array (LRA), Navigation Doppler Lidar for Precise Velocity and Range Sensing (NDL), Lunar Node 1 Navigation Demonstrator (LN-1), Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS), and Radio wave Observation at the Lunar Surface of the photoElectron Sheath (ROLSES). In total there are five NASA and four commercial payloads planned.

Mission Profile

IM-1 launched on 15 February 2024 at 06:05 UT (1:05 a.m. EST) on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Kennedy Space Center. The lander deployed from the second stage at 06:53 UT. The spacecraft continued in a 185 x 60,000 km Earth orbit, followed by a translunar injection and a maneuver to put it in a 100 km lunar orbit. Odysseus landed on the Moon at Malapert A crater near the south pole on February 22, at 23:23:53 UT. It landed in a 1 km diameter crater on a slope of about 12 degrees, at 80.13 degrees S, 1.44 degrees E, roughly 1.5 km from the planned landing position. Some of the landing gear broke upon impact, and Odysseus tipped over and is resting at a 30 degree angle to the horizontal, but is still operational. Data have been received from the science payloads. It was losing sunlight and powered down on February 28. No communications were received the next lunar day, and the mission was ended.

For more on NASA's CLPS initiative and missions, see:

https://science.nasa.gov/lunar-discovery/deliveries

Image credit: Intuitive Machines