106-534: IM-1 was a robotic Moon landing mission conducted by Intuitive Machines (IM) in February 2024 using a Nova-C lunar lander. After contact with the lunar surface on February 22 the lander tipped to an unplanned 30 degree angle. All instrument payloads remained functional and the mission was deemed a success. IM-1 was the first commercial mission to successfully soft-land on the Moon. NASA provided funding support for
212-526: A laser retroreflector array , a lidar navigation device, a stereo camera , a low-frequency radio receiver, the Lunar Node-1 beacon, and an instrument to monitor propellant levels. Additionally, a camera built by students at Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach , a planned Moon telescope, and a Jeff Koons art project were also on board. In total the payloads comprise six NASA scientific instruments and six commercial instruments (five of
318-643: A 12-degree slope. That exceeded its design limits. Odysseus skidded along the surface, broke one of its six legs and tipped to its side. On February 23, Intuitive Machines reported that the IM-1 Odysseus lander was still "alive and well", and that IM was continuing to receive data on the vehicle's status and whether the scientific payloads could still be deployed. Intuitive Machines executives said they were working to reconfigure antennas to increase downlink rates but did not estimate what sort of data rates they expected. On February 26, Intuitive Machines released
424-590: A Moon landing took place in 1962 during the Rangers 3, 4 and 5 missions flown by the United States. All three Block II missions basic vehicles were 3.1 m high and consisted of a lunar capsule covered with a balsa wood impact-limiter, 650 mm in diameter, a mono-propellant mid-course motor, a retrorocket with a thrust of 5,050 pounds-force (22.5 kN), and a gold- and chrome-plated hexagonal base 1.5 m in diameter. This lander (code-named Tonto )
530-750: A NASA-IM mission update. The EagleCam utilized a Wi-Fi connection with the Odysseus lander to relay its images back to Earth. In March 2024, the EagleCam team was recognized by U.S. Senator Rick Scott in the Congressional Record of the United States Senate for their achievements. Moon landing Clickable map of the locations of all successful soft landings on the Moon to date (top) A Moon landing or lunar landing
636-542: A backup to planet Earth and contains scientific, cultural and historical information in almost 30 languages and several encyclopedias including Misplaced Pages. The Lunar Library was set to arrive on the Moon on the Israeli spacecraft Beresheet , but it crashed landed on the Moon in May 2019. Despite this, the 30-million page Lunar Library possibly survived due to the strength of its construction. In 2021, Arch Mission announced
742-588: A being developed enough to find and read the information would already possess significant technology as the reason for not prioritizing scientific data sets. In February 2018, the Arch Mission successfully placed an archive called the Orbital Library, which contains a copy of Misplaced Pages, into low-Earth orbit. The Arch Mission has also built a payload called the Lunar Library, which serves as
848-548: A better understanding of the dynamics of lunar landings on the lunar regolith and rock surfaces in the vicinity of the Moon's south pole. Such a better understanding of the local lunar surface features would have assisted with preparations for upcoming scheduled additional landings at the lunar south pole. Designed and manufactured by staff and students working in the Space Technologies Laboratory at Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach , it
954-482: A civilian space agency, NASA . Military efforts were initiated to develop and produce mass quantities of intercontinental ballistic missiles ( ICBMs ) that would bridge the so-called missile gap and enable a policy of deterrence to nuclear war with the Soviets known as mutual assured destruction or MAD. These newly developed missiles were made available to civilians of NASA for various projects (which would have
1060-512: A crewed flight. Thus as of mid-1966, the United States had begun to pull ahead of the Soviet Union in the so-called Space Race to land a man on the Moon. Advances in other areas were necessary before crewed spacecraft could follow uncrewed ones to the surface of the Moon. Of particular importance was developing the expertise to perform flight operations in lunar orbit. Ranger, Surveyor and initial Luna Moon landing attempts all flew directly to
1166-446: A fifty-milliwatt radio transmitter, a temperature sensitive voltage controlled oscillator to measure lunar surface temperatures, and a seismometer designed with sensitivity high enough to detect the impact of a 2.3 kg (5 lb) meteorite on the opposite side of the Moon. Weight was distributed in the payload sphere so it would rotate in its liquid blanket to place the seismometer into an upright and operational position no matter what
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#17327731507251272-489: A flyby of the Moon were thwarted by in-flight failure of the onboard flight computer. This was probably because of prior heat sterilization of the spacecraft by keeping it above the boiling point of water for 24 hours on the ground, to protect the Moon from being contaminated by Earth organisms. Ranger 3 later began orbiting the Sun, called heliocentric orbit. Heat sterilization was also blamed for subsequent in-flight failures of
1378-460: A launch resulted in a spacecraft going beyond Earth orbit. The policy had the effect of hiding Soviet Moon mission failures from public view. If the attempt failed in Earth orbit before departing for the Moon, it was frequently (but not always) given a " Sputnik " or " Cosmos " Earth-orbit mission number to hide its purpose. Launch explosions were not acknowledged at all. The U.S. was not able to reach
1484-442: A member of Arch Mission Foundation's "Science and Technology Council". The discs are considered the longest-lasting storage objects ever created by humans. In December 2017, when Arch co-founder Nova Spivack heard that SpaceX was launching a Tesla into space , Spivack tweeted to Musk who jumped at the opportunity to include an Arch disk on the mission. Musk was also given the 1.1 disk for his private library. The 1.2 disk, named
1590-522: A mission managed by the United States Air Force , exploded during launch; all subsequent Pioneer lunar flights had NASA as the lead management organization. The next two returned to Earth and burned up upon reentry into the atmosphere after achieved maximum altitudes of around 114,000 kilometres (71,000 mi) and 1,530 kilometres (950 mi) respectively, far short of the roughly 400,000 kilometres (250,000 mi) required to reach
1696-460: A one-meter diameter spherical spin-stabilized spacecraft body equipped to take images of the lunar surface with a television-like system, estimate the Moon's mass and topography of the poles , record the distribution and velocity of micrometeorites, study radiation, measure magnetic fields , detect low frequency electromagnetic waves in space and use a sophisticated integrated propulsion system for maneuvering and orbit insertion as well. None of
1802-459: A soft landing. Two organizations have attempted but failed to achieve soft landings: Israeli private space agency SpaceIL with their Beresheet spacecraft (2019), and Japanese company ispace 's Hakuto-R Mission 1 (2023). On 22 February 2024, Intuitive Machine's Odysseus successfully landed on the Moon after taking off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 liftoff on 15 February 2024 in a mission between NASA , SpaceX , and Intuitive Machines , marking
1908-632: A spacecraft, or they can be deliberately arranged for vehicles which do not have an onboard landing rocket. There have been many such Moon crashes , often with their flight path controlled to impact at precise locations on the lunar surface. For example, during the Apollo program the S-IVB third stage of the Saturn V rocket as well as the spent ascent stage of the Lunar Module were deliberately crashed on
2014-486: A successful commissioning burn on February 16. The maneuver resulted in a 21 m/s (47 mph) change in the lander's velocity. Intuitive Machines planned for up to three trajectory adjustment maneuvers during the trans-lunar phase of the mission. The first was completed on February 18, and after the second maneuver on February 20, there was no need for a third. On February 20, Intuitive Machines reported that Odysseus had completed approximately 72% of its journey to
2120-408: A successful hard Moon landing with a ruggedized seismometer package in 1962 all failed. The Soviets first achieved the milestone of a hard lunar landing with a ruggedized camera in 1966, followed only months later by the first uncrewed soft lunar landing by the U.S. The speed of a crash landing on its surface is typically between 70 and 100% of the escape velocity of the target moon, and thus this
2226-492: A total of nine images per second over six seconds as it was ejected from Odysseus shortly before landing. A fourth camera was included to test another one of EagleCam's payloads, an electrodynamic dust shield (EDS), created by the Swamp Works facility at Kennedy Space Center . The CubeSat was powered from a solar-powered battery with a lifetime of 30 minutes. Had EagleCam been successful, photographs and data taken during
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#17327731507252332-542: Is a passive Moon Phases art sculpture, on the side facing towards the ground.) Odysseus became the first American spacecraft Moon landing since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 and the first commercial lunar lander. The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite made an intentional hard landing in 2009 following deorbit. Reporting by Kenneth Chang in The New York Times includes a detailed description of
2438-418: Is the arrival of a spacecraft on the surface of the Moon , including both crewed and robotic missions. The first human-made object to touch the Moon was Luna 2 in 1959. In 1969 Apollo 11 was the first crewed mission to land on the Moon. There were six crewed landings between 1969 and 1972, and numerous uncrewed landings. All crewed missions to the Moon were conducted by the Apollo program , with
2544-466: Is the soft moon landing on Titan carried out by the Huygens probe in 2005. As the moon with the thickest atmosphere, landings on Titan may be accomplished by using atmospheric entry techniques that are generally lighter in weight than a rocket with equivalent capability. The Soviets succeeded in making the first crash landing on the Moon in 1959. Crash landings may occur because of malfunctions in
2650-411: Is the total velocity which must be shed from the target moon's gravitational attraction for a soft landing to occur. For Earth's Moon, the escape velocity is 2.38 kilometres per second (1.48 mi/s). The change in velocity (referred to as a delta-v ) is usually provided by a landing rocket, which must be carried into space by the original launch vehicle as part of the overall spacecraft. An exception
2756-652: The Odysseus lunar lander used in the IM-1 mission. The IM-1 mission in February 2024 followed the Peregrine mission by Astrobotic Technology, which launched in January 2024. The Peregrine landing at Gruithuisen Domes was abandoned when a propellant leak was observed after launch, and the spacecraft was guided to re-enter Earth's atmosphere. Odysseus was equipped with six instruments developed by NASA, including
2862-461: The Thor booster modified with an Able upper stage carried an infrared image scanning television system with a resolution of 1 milliradian to study the Moon's surface, an ionization chamber to measure radiation in space, a diaphragm/microphone assembly to detect micrometeorites , a magnetometer , and temperature-variable resistors to monitor spacecraft internal thermal conditions. The first,
2968-533: The attack on Pearl Harbor ; the V-2 rocket , a ballistic missile which killed thousands in attacks on London and Antwerp ; and the atom bomb , which killed hundreds of thousands in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki . In the 1950s, tensions mounted between the two ideologically opposed superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union that had emerged as victors in the conflict, particularly after
3074-493: The kinetic energy of a returning spacecraft and reduce its speed for safe landing. These functions greatly complicate a moon landing mission and lead to many additional operational considerations. Any moon departure rocket must first be carried to the Moon's surface by a moon landing rocket, increasing the latter's required size. The Moon departure rocket, larger moon landing rocket and any Earth atmosphere entry equipment such as heat shields and parachutes must in turn be lifted by
3180-453: The lunar landing of the Odysseus lander may have enabled a better understanding of the dynamics of lunar landings on the lunar regolith and rock surfaces in the vicinity of the Moon's south pole. EagleCam would've assisted in the objectives of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, such as gaining a better understanding of the local lunar surface features to assist with preparations for future manned and unmanned missions to
3286-431: The lunar south pole region, making India the fourth nation to successfully complete a soft landing on the Moon. Chandrayaan-3 saw a successful soft landing of its Vikram lander and Pragyan rover at 6.04 pm IST (1234 GMT), marking the first uncrewed soft landing in the little-explored region. On 19 January 2024, JAXA successfully landed its SLIM lander , making Japan the fifth nation to successfully complete
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3392-492: The lunar south pole was chosen because it appeared to be a relatively flat and safe place near the pole to land, amongst other considerations. After making a last-minute software patch to the lander's altitude monitoring systems, Odysseus began its landing sequence at 23:11 UTC (6:11 p.m. EST) on February 22 and landed near Malapert A —an area determined to contain water ice—at 23:23 UTC (6:23 p.m. EST). Controllers confirmed that faint communications were received from
3498-410: The radar and landing systems required to make a true controlled touchdown. Five of Surveyor's seven missions made successful uncrewed Moon landings. Surveyor 3 was visited two years after its Moon landing by the crew of Apollo 12. They removed parts of it for examination back on Earth to determine the effects of long-term exposure to the lunar environment. Within four months of each other in early 1966
3604-586: The 'Solar Library' by the Arch Mission Foundation also represents the first permanent space library, and is projected to orbit around the Sun for at least a few million years. The Solar Library was launched on the SpaceX Falcon Heavy test flight on February 6, 2018, inside Musk's red Tesla Roadster. The payload was placed in an elliptical orbit that extends nearly 243 million miles from the Sun at its farthest point. In 2019,
3710-532: The Arch Libraries through a decentralised read-write data sharing network that spans the Solar System. Data in the libraries will include Misplaced Pages , Project Gutenberg , human genomes, and other large open-data sets. They will also allow donations of money to instruct that certain data be included, and will do so without censorship of what can be included. The foundation cites the likelihood that
3816-476: The Arch Mission sent the Lunar Library, a 30 million page library of books, data, images and a copy of English Misplaced Pages to the Moon aboard the Israeli Beresheet Lander . The Lunar Library also contained an unannounced microscopic sample of tardigrades , a form of life that can go into suspended animation and survive in space. Nova Spivack called himself a " space pirate " who contaminated
3922-536: The EagleCam CubeSat flew onboard the Blue Origin NS-24 return-to-flight mission on December 19, 2023. Just before landing, at approximately 30 m (98 ft) above the lunar surface, Odysseus was to eject this CubeSat. Once ejected, EagleCam was supposed to semi-hard land on the lunar surface somewhere near the lander at 10 m/s (33 ft/s). As it descended to the surface EagleCam
4028-645: The Luna 9 hard landing of a ruggedized sphere using airbags at a 50-kilometre-per-hour (31 mph) ballistic impact speed had much more in common with the failed 1962 Ranger landing attempts and their planned 160-kilometre-per-hour (99 mph) impacts than with the Surveyor 1 soft landing on three footpads using its radar-controlled, adjustable-thrust retrorocket. While Luna 9 and Surveyor 1 were both major national accomplishments, only Surveyor 1 had reached its landing site employing key technologies that would be needed for
4134-878: The Lunaprise time capsule, which includes the Lunar Library compiled by the Arch Mission Foundation . The Lunar Library includes content from the English Misplaced Pages and the Rosetta Project . Also included onboard is the AstroVault by Quantum Aerospace which includes an archive of musical recordings and photos, which features songs by Jimi Hendrix , Bob Marley , and Elvis Presley , among other musicians. A Radio Frequency Mass Gauge (RFMG) on board estimated how much propellant
4240-600: The Lunar Library have instructions to decode the DNA and be able to retrieve the digital information in it. Arch hopes to seed the Solar System with millions and possibly billions of archives into "all kinds of locations". It wants to build a permanent library on the Moon and on Mars. Arch envisions its small light-weight disks might be an alternative means of moving large amounts of data between Earth and Mars as opposed to radio signals. The organization envisions connecting
4346-526: The Lunar Library on the Moon, on the Intuitive Machines IM-1 mission's Odysseus lander. The library was stored by etching high-resolution microscopic images into 25 thin layers of nickel. The first four layers include approximately 60,000 pages of textbooks, books on language, and information to be able to unravel the deeper layers. DNA digital data storage is also used to store 20,000 images and 20 notable books. The analog layers of
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4452-553: The Moon at close range, the Ranger 7 mission was viewed as a national turning point and instrumental in allowing the key 1965 NASA budget appropriation to pass through the United States Congress intact without a reduction in funds for the Apollo crewed Moon landing program. Subsequent successes with Ranger 8 and Ranger 9 further buoyed U.S. hopes. The Luna 9 spacecraft, launched by the Soviet Union , performed
4558-415: The Moon before its descent to the lunar surface on February 22. On February 21, while still in orbit, Odysseus sent back high-resolution images of the lunar surface. Intuitive Machines adjusted the descent burn parameters based on data from the lunar orbit insertion burn. IM indicated the risks undertaken during the lunar landing phase of the mission would be a "challenge". A later report indicated that, as
4664-468: The Moon by doing so, while some scientists argued that tardigrades were already present there. The Lunar Library also contains several vaults of secret content, including David Copperfield 's magic secrets, a cafe's unpublished recipe for queso , a microscopic shrine including relics and spiritual texts, and a sample of the Bodhi leaf from India. On February 22, 2024, the Arch Mission successfully landed
4770-404: The Moon during their descent. The Ranger 1 and 2 Block I missions were virtually identical. Spacecraft experiments included a Lyman-alpha telescope, a rubidium-vapor magnetometer , electrostatic analyzers, medium-energy-range particle detectors , two triple coincidence telescopes, a cosmic-ray integrating ionization chamber , cosmic dust detectors, and scintillation counters . The goal
4876-470: The Moon several times to provide impacts registering as a moonquake on seismometers that had been left on the lunar surface. Such crashes were instrumental in mapping the internal structure of the Moon . To return to Earth, the escape velocity of the Moon must be overcome for the spacecraft to escape the gravity well of the Moon. Rockets must be used to leave the Moon and return to space. Upon reaching Earth, atmospheric entry techniques are used to absorb
4982-441: The Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. Steve Altemus, CEO of IM, says Nova-C is the first spacecraft to use liquid methane and liquid oxygen ( methalox ) propulsion beyond low-Earth orbit, and also the first methalox spacecraft to land on an off-world celestial body. In December 2017, Space Policy Directive 1 signaled an intention to return astronauts to the Moon. Excerpts from NASA documents obtained by The New York Times suggested
5088-640: The Moon with the Pioneer and Ranger programs , with fifteen consecutive U.S. uncrewed lunar missions from 1958 to 1964 failing their primary photographic missions. However, Rangers 4 and 6 successfully repeated the Soviet lunar impacts as part of their secondary missions. Three U.S. missions in 1962 attempted to hard land small seismometer packages released by the main Ranger spacecraft. These surface packages were to use retrorockets to survive landing, unlike
5194-423: The Moon with uncrewed missions. Three private/commercial missions, Beresheet (hard landing), Hakuto-R (hard landing), and Odysseus (soft landing) have also reached the lunar surface (see #Commercial landings ). The Soviet Union (Interkosmos), the United States (NASA), China (CNSA), India (ISRO), and Japan (JAXA) are the only five nations to have successfully achieved soft landings. The Soviet Union performed
5300-515: The Moon's south pole, through NASA's Artemis program . However, while photos of Odysseus were never taken by EagleCam, it still recorded and transmitted other types of data to Intuitive Machines and the Space Technologies Lab via the IM-1 lander. Through EagleCam, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University became the world's first university to have a payload on the moon's surface solely developed by faculty and students. A prototype of
5406-403: The Moon's surface. Odysseus performed its lunar orbit insertion (LOI) on February 21, altering its velocity by 800 m/s (1,800 mph). Intuitive Machines reported the 408-second main engine LOI burn placed the lander in a 92 km (57 mi) lunar orbit. On February 22 IM indicated a "lunar correction maneuver" had raised the orbit. The lander spent approximately 24 hours orbiting
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#17327731507255512-464: The Moon, Intuitive Machines reported that they could not re-establish contact with the lander after the lunar night, bringing an end to the IM-1 mission. The EagleCam was a deployable CubeSat camera system designed especially to photograph the lunar landing of the Nova-C Odysseus lander on the Moon. Photographs taken during the lunar landing of the Odysseus lander may also have enabled
5618-497: The Moon, where they successfully operated for 10 and 4 months respectively, covering 10.5 km (6.5 mi) ( Lunokhod 1 ) and 37 km (23 mi) ( Lunokhod 2 ). These rover missions were in operation concurrently with the Zond and Luna series of Moon flyby, orbiter and landing missions. The U.S. robotic Surveyor program was part of an effort to locate a safe site on the Moon for a human landing and test under lunar conditions
5724-495: The NASA Lunar Prospector orbiter was deliberately targeted to impact a permanently shadowed area of Shoemaker Crater near the lunar south pole. It was hoped that energy from the impact would vaporize suspected shadowed ice deposits in the crater and liberate a water vapor plume detectable from Earth. No such plume was observed. However, a small vial of ashes from the body of pioneer lunar scientist Eugene Shoemaker
5830-525: The R-7 rocket was used to launch the first escape from Earth's gravity into a solar orbit , the first crash impact onto the surface of the Moon, and the first photography of the never-before-seen far side of the Moon . These were the Luna 1 , Luna 2 , and Luna 3 spacecraft. The U.S. response to these Soviet achievements was to greatly accelerate previously existing military space and missile projects and to create
5936-413: The Ranger lunar probes: Block I prototypes, which would carry various radiation detectors in test flights to a very high Earth orbit that came nowhere near the Moon; Block II, which would try to accomplish the first Moon landing by hard landing a seismometer package; and Block III, which would crash onto the lunar surface without any braking rockets while taking very high resolution wide-area photographs of
6042-562: The Russians. ...We're ready to spend reasonable amounts of money, but we're talking about fantastic expenditures which wreck our budget and all these other domestic programs, and the only justification for it, in my opinion, to do it is because we hope to beat them and demonstrate that starting behind, as we did by a couple of years, by God, we passed them." — John F. Kennedy on the planned Moon landing, 21 November 1962 This payload sphere contained six silver- cadmium batteries to power
6148-683: The Solar System as part of a distributed backup strategy. The foundation plans "multiple...Arch libraries intended to preserve and disseminate humanity's knowledge across time and space for the benefit of future generations". The foundation is technology agnostic and will use whichever storage technology is best for its purposes including multiple technologies. The first method used is " 5D laser optical data storage in quartz ", which will reportedly remain readable for up to 14 billion years, resist cosmic radiation, and can withstand temperatures up to 1,000°C. The foundation also plans on spinning off companies based on patents from research groups involved with
6254-443: The Soviet Union and the United States had accomplished successful Moon landings with uncrewed spacecraft. To the general public both countries had demonstrated roughly equal technical capabilities by returning photographic images from the surface of the Moon. These pictures provided a key affirmative answer to the crucial question of whether or not lunar soil would support upcoming crewed landers with their much greater weight. However,
6360-551: The United States' first soft unmanned Moon landing in over 50 years. This event marked the first successful landing of a privately owned spacecraft on the Moon. A total of twelve astronauts have landed on the Moon. This was accomplished with two pilot-astronauts flying a Lunar Module on each of six NASA missions. The missions spanned a 41-month period starting 20 July 1969, beginning with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on Apollo 11 , and ending on 14 December 1972 with Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt on Apollo 17 . Cernan
6466-455: The added benefit of demonstrating the payload, guidance accuracy and reliabilities of U.S. ICBMs to the Soviets). After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, historical records were released to allow the true accounting of Soviet lunar efforts. Unlike the U.S. tradition of assigning a particular mission name in advance of a launch, the Soviets assigned a public " Luna " mission number only if
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#17327731507256572-518: The agency would prioritize the private spaceflight sector. In November 2018, NASA announced the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, selecting nine companies to deploy payloads for the agency. In May 2019, NASA announced that Astrobotic Technology , Intuitive Machines , and Orbit Beyond would develop lunar landers, awarding Intuitive Machines US$ 77 million. Intuitive Machines was paid US$ 118 million to develop
6678-462: The development by both countries of the hydrogen bomb . On 4 October 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 as the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth and so initiated the Space Race . This unexpected event was a source of pride to the Soviets and shock to the U.S., who could now potentially be surprise attacked by nuclear-tipped Soviet rockets in under 30 minutes. The craft
6784-405: The entire lunar surface for the selection of crewed landing sites and, for the Soviets, the checkout of radio communications gear that would be used in future soft landings. An unexpected major discovery from initial lunar orbiters were vast volumes of dense materials beneath the surface of the Moon's maria . Such mass concentrations (" mascons ") can send a crewed mission dangerously off course in
6890-477: The expended Falcon 9 upper stage delivered the spacecraft to its translunar trajectory. Originally planned to launch on February 13, SpaceX postponed the launch after reporting a technical issue with propellant loaded onto the lander. After separation from the launch vehicle, the Nova Control operations center established communication with the lander and conducted initial checkouts . Images captured by
6996-484: The final minutes of a Moon landing when aiming for a relatively small landing zone that is smooth and safe. Mascons were also found over a longer period of time to greatly disturb the orbits of low-altitude satellites around the Moon, making their orbits unstable and forcing an inevitable crash on the lunar surface in the relatively short period of months to a few years. Controlling the location of impact for spent lunar orbiters can have scientific value. For example, in 1999
7102-405: The final resting orientation of the external landing sphere. After landing, plugs were to be opened allowing the freon to evaporate and the payload sphere to settle into upright contact with the landing sphere. The batteries were sized to allow up to three months of operation for the payload sphere. Various mission constraints limited the landing site to Oceanus Procellarum on the lunar equator, which
7208-459: The final twenty-minute period before crashing on the lunar surface. Camera resolution was 1,132 scan lines, far higher than the 525 lines found in a typical U.S. 1964 home television. While Ranger 6 suffered a failure of this camera system and returned no photographs despite an otherwise successful flight, the subsequent Ranger 7 mission to Mare Cognitum was a complete success. Breaking the six-year string of failures in U.S. attempts to photograph
7314-466: The first robotic probe to land on the Moon and safely return a sample of lunar soil back to Earth. It represented the first lunar sample return mission by the Soviet Union , and was the third lunar sample return mission overall, following the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 missions. This mission was later successfully repeated by Luna 20 (1972) and Luna 24 (1976). In 1970 and 1973 two Lunokhod ("Moonwalker") robotic lunar rovers were delivered to
7420-411: The first hard Moon landing – "hard" meaning the spacecraft intentionally crashes into the Moon at high speeds – with the Luna 2 spacecraft in 1959, a feat the U.S. duplicated in 1962 with Ranger 4 . Following their initial hard landings on the Moon, sixteen Soviet, U.S., Chinese and Indian spacecraft have used braking rockets ( retrorockets ) to make soft landings and perform scientific operations on
7526-452: The first images from the surface taken by the lunar probe. Based on Earth and moon positioning, the IM team reported that flight controllers would continue to communicate with Odysseus until Tuesday (February 27) morning. As of February 28, Odysseus was still receiving power, and all six NASA payloads were providing good data. In a press conference the same day, Intuitive Machines said the lander
7632-399: The first successful soft Moon landing on 3 February 1966. Airbags protected its 99-kilogram (218 lb) ejectable capsule which survived an impact speed of over 15 metres per second (54 km/h; 34 mph). Luna 13 duplicated this feat with a similar Moon landing on 24 December 1966. Both returned panoramic photographs that were the first views from the lunar surface. Luna 16 was
7738-490: The four spacecraft built in this series of probes survived launch on its Atlas ICBM outfitted with an Able upper stage. Following the unsuccessful Atlas-Able Pioneer probes, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory embarked upon an uncrewed spacecraft development program whose modular design could be used to support both lunar and interplanetary exploration missions. The interplanetary versions were known as Mariners ; lunar versions were Rangers . JPL envisioned three versions of
7844-499: The lander ideally would reach 66 hours after launch. No cameras were carried by the Ranger landers, and no pictures were to be captured from the lunar surface during the mission. Instead, the 3.1 metres (10 ft) Ranger Block II mother ship carried a 200-scan-line television camera to capture images during the free-fall descent to the lunar surface. The camera was designed to transmit a picture every 10 seconds. Seconds before impact, at 5 and 0.6 kilometres (3.11 and 0.37 mi) above
7950-502: The lander was being prepared for its descent to the surface, mission controllers determined a safety switch on the primary laser rangefinder system had not been activated during pre-launch preparations. Teams on the ground worked around the issue by reprogramming Odysseus to use data from an experimental NASA payload, the Navigation Doppler Lidar for Precise Velocity and Range Sensing . A favored landing site in 2020
8056-529: The lander. The lander was initially thought to be in a fully vertical orientation, based on stale telemetry. It was later determined to have landed at a 30 degree angle, with its solar panels and scientific instrumentation functionally oriented, but with its radio transmission rates somewhat reduced due to the unexpected angle of the lander's antennas. The lander appeared to most probably have lost one or more of its 6 landing struts and to be resting on an externally mounted helium tank. (The only non-functional payload
8162-422: The landing anomaly: Tim Crain, the company’s chief technology officer, said the spacecraft had been designed to stay upright when landing even on a slope of 10 degrees or more. The navigation software was programmed to look for a spot where the slope was five degrees or less. Because the laser instruments on Odysseus for measuring altitude were not working during descent, the spacecraft landed faster than planned on
8268-458: The last departing the lunar surface in December 1972. After Luna 24 in 1976 there were no soft landings on the Moon until Chang'e 3 in 2013. All soft landings took place on the near side of the Moon until January 2019, when Chang'e 4 made the first landing on the far side of the Moon . Six government space agencies, Interkosmos , NASA , CNSA , ISRO , JAXA and ESA , have reached
8374-498: The latter being scientific and one cultural). Odysseus landed at the Malapert-A crater and stayed active there for about a week, before the Sun sets at the landing site. The Odysseus lander is not designed to survive the lunar night , which lasts about two weeks. The lander has a chip with works of 200 artists, including works of Pablo Picasso , Michelangelo Buonarroti , Jeff Koons and Bram Reijnders . The lander carries
8480-492: The lunar surface in a Moon landing and then hauling it all back into space yet again, working against lunar gravity both ways. Such considerations lead logically to a lunar orbit rendezvous mission profile for a crewed Moon landing. Accordingly, beginning in mid-1966 both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. naturally progressed into missions featuring lunar orbit as a prerequisite to a crewed Moon landing. The primary goals of these initial uncrewed orbiters were extensive photographic mapping of
8586-487: The lunar surface, the Ranger mother ships took pictures (which may be viewed here ). Other instruments gathering data before the mother ship crashed onto the Moon were a gamma ray spectrometer to measure overall lunar chemical composition and a radar altimeter. The radar altimeter was to give a signal ejecting the landing capsule and its solid-fueled braking rocket overboard from the Block II mother ship. The braking rocket
8692-460: The lunar surface. In 1966 the Soviet Union accomplished the first soft landings and took the first pictures from the lunar surface during the Luna 9 and Luna 13 missions. The U.S. followed with five Surveyor soft landings. China's ongoing "Chang'e" program has landed 4 times since 2013, achieving robotic soil sample return and the first landing on the far side of the Moon. On 23 August 2023, ISRO successfully landed its Chandrayaan-3 module in
8798-581: The main aim of its mission. “We reset the visual processing unit and powered up the EagleCam, and were able to eject it, and (we) ejected it about 4 meters away from the vehicle safely. However, either in camera or in the Wi-Fi signal back to the lander, something might not be working correctly. So, the Embry‑Riddle team is working on that and wrestling with that to see if there’s anything they can do,” Steve Altemus, CEO of Intuitive Machines commented on EagleCam in
8904-416: The mission through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. The lander, named Odysseus , carried six NASA-developed payloads and several others from commercial and educational customers. On February 29, Odysseus lost power and shut down with the start of the lunar night. IM-1 was the first soft lunar landing by a private company and Odysseus was the first American-made spacecraft to soft-land on
9010-432: The original launch vehicle, greatly increasing its size by a significant and almost prohibitive degree. The political context of the 1960s helps to parse both the United States and Soviet Union's efforts to land spacecraft, and eventually humans, on the Moon. World War II had introduced many new and deadly innovations including blitzkrieg -style surprise attacks used in the invasion of Poland and Finland , as well as in
9116-407: The parent vehicle, which was designed to deliberately crash onto the surface. The final three Ranger probes performed successful high altitude lunar reconnaissance photography missions during intentional crash impacts between 2.62 and 2.68 kilometres per second (9,400 and 9,600 km/h). Three different designs of Pioneer lunar probes were flown on three different modified ICBMs. Those flown on
9222-509: The presence of the Van Allen radiation belts before reentering Earth's atmosphere. The second passed by the Moon at a distance of more than 60,000 kilometres (37,000 mi), twice as far as planned and too far away to trigger either of the on-board scientific instruments, yet still becoming the first U.S. spacecraft to reach a solar orbit . The final Pioneer lunar probe design consisted of four " paddlewheel " solar panels extending from
9328-506: The sculpture Moon Phases by Jeff Koons within its payload. This is the first sculpture installation to reach the Moon since Paul Van Hoeydonck's Fallen Astronaut sculpture was placed on the Moon by David Scott of Apollo 15 in 1971. Koons describes Moon Phases as, "125 miniature Moon sculptures, each approximately one inch in diameter." The lander also carries private disclosed and undisclosed payloads from commercial company's, educational institutions, and private citizens. One being
9434-411: The spacecraft after separation from the launch vehicle were released on February 17. The lander was scheduled to perform a main engine "commissioning burn" on February 15. Trent Martin, Intuitive Machines vice president of Space Systems, described this as a "critical step" for the mission. After reporting issues with the IM-1 star tracker and adjustment of the liquid oxygen line cooling time IM reported
9540-449: The spacecraft computer on Ranger 4 and the power subsystem on Ranger 5. Only Ranger 4 reached the Moon in an uncontrolled crash impact on the far side of the Moon. Block III probes replaced the Block II landing capsule and its retrorocket with a heavier, more capable television system to support landing site selection for upcoming Apollo crewed Moon landing missions. Six cameras were designed to take thousands of high-altitude photographs in
9646-417: The surface without a lunar orbit. Such direct ascents use a minimum amount of fuel for uncrewed spacecraft on a one-way trip. In contrast, crewed vehicles need additional fuel after a lunar landing to enable a return trip back to Earth for the crew. Leaving this massive amount of required Earth-return fuel in lunar orbit until it is used later in the mission is far more efficient than taking such fuel down to
9752-416: The target moon, a spacecraft will be drawn ever closer to its surface at increasing speeds due to gravity. In order to land intact it must decelerate to less than about 160 kilometres per hour (100 mph) and be ruggedized to withstand a "hard landing" impact, or it must decelerate to negligible speed at contact for a "soft landing" (the only option for humans). The first three attempts by the U.S. to perform
9858-466: The technologies it uses to fund itself in the future. As a proof of concept of the 5D optical data storage technology, Arch made 5 disks each containing Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy comprising about 3 megabytes each. The disks were created by Peter Kazansky at the University of Southampton 's Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC), the inventor of the 5D optical data storage technology and
9964-585: The vicinity of the Moon. NASA then collaborated with the United States Army 's Ballistic Missile Agency to fly two extremely small cone-shaped probes on the Juno ICBM, carrying only photocells which would be triggered by the light of the Moon and a lunar radiation environment experiment using a Geiger-Müller tube detector. The first of these reached an altitude of only around 100,000 kilometres (62,000 mi), gathering data that established
10070-443: Was also barely visible to the naked eye as the steady beeping of the radio beacon aboard Sputnik 1 as it passed overhead every 96 minutes, which was widely viewed on both sides as effective propaganda to Third World countries demonstrating the technological superiority of the Soviet political system compared to that of the U.S. This perception was reinforced by a string of subsequent rapid-fire Soviet space achievements. In 1959,
10176-669: Was available during the IM-1 mission. This was the first long-duration test of an RFMG on a standalone spacecraft. In December 2023, Odysseus arrived at Kennedy Space Center for processing. On January 31, 2024, the Odysseus spacecraft was encapsulated in the payload fairing of its Falcon 9 Block 5 launch vehicle. On February 13, IM announced that two wet dress rehearsals loading Odysseus with propellants had been successful and they were ready for launch. A Falcon 9 booster launched Odysseus from LC-39A in Florida at 06:05 UTC on February 15, 2024. The booster returned to LZ-1 and
10282-465: Was between the Sea of Serenity ( Mare Serenitatis ) and the Sea of Crises ( Mare Crisium ). Lunar maria are large plains formed when lava flowed into ancient impact basins. Later, a lunar highlands location near the south pole of the Moon was chosen for the landing, since that region is believed to have a source of water for a future lunar base . The Malapert-A crater area 300 km (190 mi) from
10388-402: Was deemed vital to be assured of capturing high-bandwidth television transmissions from the Moon during a one-shot fifteen-minute time window in subsequent Block II and Block III lunar descents. Both Block I missions suffered failures of the new Agena upper stage and never left low Earth parking orbit after launch; both burned up upon reentry after only a few days. The first attempts to perform
10494-587: Was delivered by the Lunar Prospector to the crater named in his honor – the only human remains on the Moon. Arch Mission Foundation#Lunar Library Arch Mission Foundation is a non-profit organization whose goal is to create multiple redundant repositories of human knowledge around the Solar System, including on Earth. The organization was founded by Nova Spivack and Nick Slavin in 2015 and incorporated in 2016. The Arch Mission plans to deliver multiple backups of civilization to locations around
10600-415: Was designed to provide impact cushioning using an exterior blanket of crushable balsa wood and an interior filled with incompressible liquid freon . A 42-kilogram (93 lb) 30-centimetre-diameter (0.98 ft) metal payload sphere floated and was free to rotate in a liquid freon reservoir contained in the landing sphere. "Everything that we do ought to really be tied-in to getting onto the Moon ahead of
10706-411: Was in its final hours of operation as the sun moved out of view of the one illuminated solar panel. On February 29, Odysseus lost power and shut down with the start of the lunar night. However, the company did not rule out bringing Odysseus back to life after the two-week lunar night. Executives said they would try contacting the lander in two to three weeks. About one month after Odysseus landed on
10812-430: Was intended to deploy from Odysseus and take the first photographs of a spacecraft landing on the moon from a third-person perspective . It also planned to test an electrodynamic dust shield system in space for the first time and utilize a Wi-Fi connection to transmit data for the first time on the lunar surface. EagleCam's primary payload was its camera system, consisting of three fisheye-lens cameras which would take
10918-447: Was planned to capture the first third-person images of a lunar landing. However, due to complications arising from a software patch which reconfigured the lander's sensors used during the final descent phase to the moon's surface, EagleCam was powered off and remained attached to Odysseus through landing. It was later ejected on February 28 but was a partial failure as it returned all types of data, except post IM-1 landing images that were
11024-424: Was the last man to step off the lunar surface. All Apollo lunar missions had a third crew member who remained on board the command module . To get to the Moon, a spacecraft must first leave Earth's gravity well ; currently, the only practical means is a rocket . Unlike airborne vehicles such as balloons and jets , a rocket can continue accelerating in the vacuum outside the atmosphere . Upon approach of
11130-425: Was to place these Block I spacecraft in a very high Earth orbit with an apogee of 110,000 kilometres (68,000 mi) and a perigee of 60,000 kilometres (37,000 mi). From that vantage point, scientists could make direct measurements of the magnetosphere over a period of many months while engineers perfected new methods to routinely track and communicate with spacecraft over such large distances. Such practice
11236-504: Was to slow and the landing sphere to a dead stop at 330 metres (1,080 ft) above the surface and separate, allowing the landing sphere to free fall once more and hit the surface. On Ranger 3, failure of the Atlas guidance system and a software error aboard the Agena upper stage combined to put the spacecraft on a course that would miss the Moon. Attempts to salvage lunar photography during
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