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91-524: The Intuitive Machines Nova-C , or simply Nova-C , is a class of lunar landers designed by Intuitive Machines (IM) to deliver small payloads to the surface of the Moon . Intuitive Machines was one of three service providers awarded task orders in 2019 for delivery of NASA science payloads to the Moon. The IM-1 lunar lander, named Odysseus (pronounced / ə ˈ d ɪ s i ə s / ə- DISS -ee-əs ),
182-417: A partial success occurs when a spacecraft lands intact on the Moon but its in-situ operations is compromised as a result of the landing process for any reason. Landing on any Solar System body comes with challenges unique to that body. The Moon has relatively high gravity compared to that of asteroids or comets—and some other planetary satellites —and no significant atmosphere. Practically, this means that
273-564: A $ 112 million task order (8th CLPS contract, not counting OrbitBeyond or Masten Space Systems) for a mission to the far side of the Moon using the second Blue Ghost lander, expected to launch in 2026. The competitive nature of the CLPS program is expected to reduce the cost of lunar exploration, accelerate a robotic return to the Moon, sample return , resource prospecting in the south polar region , and promote innovation and growth of related commercial industries. The payload development program
364-435: A CLPS contract (8th, not counting OrbitBeyond) worth $ 73 million to a team led by the company Draper. The mission targeted Schrödinger Basin on the farside of the Moon, planned for 2025. The mission lander, called SERIES-2 by Draper, would deliver to Schrödinger Basin three experiments to collect seismic data, measure the heat flow and electrical conductivity of the lunar subsurface and measure electromagnetic phenomena created by
455-510: A CLPS contract to Firefly Aerospace for a mission to deliver a suite of 10 science investigations and technology demonstrations to the Moon in 2023. On July 21, 2022, NASA announced that it had awarded a CLPS contract to Draper Laboratories. On August 29, 2024 NASA announced that it awarded another CLPS task order to Intuitive Machines. The six payloads include four from NASA, one from the European Space Agency and one from
546-491: A Nova-C mission for CLPS task order CP-11. It will deliver payloads to the lunar swirl in the Reiner Gamma region. In August 2021, Intuitive Machines selected SpaceX to launch its third lunar mission, IM-3. As of August 2024, the launch of IM-3 is expected to take place no earlier than October 2025. The lander will conduct experiments investigating the properties of the unexpected magnetic field that has been detected in
637-548: A brief hop off the lunar surface. The Apollo Lunar Module was the lunar lander for the United States' Apollo program . As of 2024, it is the only crewed lunar lander. The Apollo program completed six successful lunar soft-landings from 1969 until 1972; a seventh lunar landing attempt by the Apollo program was aborted when Apollo 13 's service module suffered explosive venting from its oxygen tanks. The LK lunar module
728-407: A combined maximum of 200 W on the lunar surface. A 25 amp-hour battery supplies power to a 28 VDC bus for use by the spacecraft when power generation lags consumption. Nova-C is capable of 24/7 data coverage for its client payloads The lander is designed to stay upright when landing on a slope of up to 10 degrees. The lander includes autonomous landing and hazard detection technology and once landed
819-727: A commercial company in history with the IM-1 mission in 2024. The program was extended to add support for large payloads starting after 2025. The CLPS program is run by NASA's Science Mission Directorate along with the Human Exploration and Operations and Space Technology Mission directorates. NASA expects the contractors to provide all activities necessary to safely integrate, accommodate, transport, and operate NASA payloads, including launch vehicles, lunar lander spacecraft, lunar surface systems, Earth re-entry vehicles and associated resources. Eight missions have been contracted under
910-586: A follow-up robotic lander named Beresheet 2 . India's Chandrayaan Programme conducted an unsuccessful robotic lunar soft-landing attempt on 6 September 2019 as part of its Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft with the lander crashing on the Moon's surface. On 23 August 2023, the program's follow-up Chandrayaan-3 lander achieved India's first robotic soft-landing and later conducted a brief hop on 3 September 2023 to test technologies required for Indian lunar sample return mission called Chandrayaan-4 . Japan's ispace (not to be confused with China's i-Space ) attempted
1001-410: A lunar feature called Reiner Gamma . The mission was known as IM-3 mission and was planned to land on the Moon in 2024. The contract value was $ 77.5 million and under the contract, Intuitive Machines was responsible for end-to-end delivery services, including payload integration, delivery from Earth to the surface of the Moon, and payload operations. On July 21, 2022, NASA announced that it had awarded
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#17327974346281092-516: A lunar soft-landing by its Hakuto-R Mission 1 robotic lander on 25 April 2023. The attempt was unsuccessful and the lander crashed into the lunar surface. The company has plans for another landing attempt in 2024. Russia's Luna-Glob program, the successor program to the Soviet Union's Luna program , launched the Luna 25 lunar lander on 10 August 2023; the probe's intended destination was near
1183-401: A much stricter range of between −40 and 50 °C (−40 and 122 °F), and human comfort requires a range of 20 to 24 °C (68 to 75 °F). This means that the lander must cool and heat its instruments or crew compartment. The length of the lunar night makes it difficult to use solar electric power to heat the instruments, and nuclear heaters are often used. Achieving a soft landing
1274-549: A partnership with Nokia Bell Labs and IM . MAPP will collect lunar samples for NASA under a contract worth just $ 1, which is symbolic of a new incentive for the emerging commercial space industry to access resources in space. Photos of the samples and other data will be transmitted through radio equipment and antennas to communicate with the Nova-C lander. A collaboration in order to demonstrate 4G cellular connectivity, in partnership with Nokia Bell Labs and NASA will be aboard
1365-412: A payload of 100 kg (220 lb). Nova-C was developed by Intuitive Machines, inheriting technology from NASA's Project Morpheus . Its gimbaled VR900 main engine uses methane and oxygen as liquid propellants . Pressurized by helium gas, the engine produces 3,100 N (700 lb f ) of thrust. For attitude control the vehicle uses a helium reaction control system (RCS). Each thruster in
1456-527: A service by the CLPS vendor. Lunar-VISE will study a rare form of lunar volcanism. Lunar-VISE will be sent to one of the Gruithuisen Domes: Mons Gruithuisen Gamma or Mons Gruithuisen Delta . The Lunar Explorer Instrument for space biology Applications (LEIA) science suite, is a small CubeSat-based device. LEIA will provide biological research on the Moon – which cannot be simulated or replicated with high fidelity on
1547-424: A similar method. Airbag methods are not typical. For example, NASA's Surveyor 1 probe, launched around the same time as Luna 9, did not use an airbag for final touchdown. Instead, after it arrested its velocity at an altitude of 3.4m it simply fell to the lunar surface. To accommodate the fall the spacecraft was equipped with crushable components that would soften the blow and keep the payload safe. More recently,
1638-671: A solicitation for Lunar Surface Instrument and Technology Payloads that may become CLPS customers. Proposals were due by November 2018 and January 17, 2019. NASA makes annual calls for proposals. On May 31, 2019, NASA announced a list of awards, to Astrobotic , of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, $ 79.5 million; Intuitive Machines , of Houston, Texas, $ 77 million; and OrbitBeyond , $ 97 million; to launch their Moon landers. However, Orbit Beyond dropped out in July 2019 (with NASA acknowledging termination of contract on July 29, 2019), but remained able to bid on future missions. In January 2024, NASA reported
1729-416: Is called Development and Advancement of Lunar Instrumentation (DALI), and the payload goals are exploration, in situ resource utilization ( ISRU ), and lunar science. The first instruments were expected to be selected by summer 2019, and the flight opportunities were expected to start in 2021. Multiple contracts will be issued, and the early payloads will likely be small because of the limited capacity of
1820-482: Is in contrast to a small asteroid, in which "landing" is more often called "docking" and is a matter of rendezvous and matching velocity more than slowing a rapid descent. Since rocketry is used for descent and landing, the Moon's gravity necessitates the use of more fuel than is needed for asteroid landing. Indeed, one of the central design constraints for the Apollo program's Moon landing was mass (as more mass requires more fuel to land) required to land and take off from
1911-525: Is still capable of relocating itself to a second landing site by performing a vertical takeoff, cruise, and vertical landing. Intuitive Machines is conducting the first three Nova-C missions for the NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. The landers are tasked with delivering small science and technology-development payloads. The lander for the first Nova-C mission, IM-1, was named Odysseus . A contract for
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#17327974346282002-428: Is the overarching goal of any lunar lander, and distinguishes landers from impactors, which were the first type of spacecraft to reach the surface of the Moon. All lunar landers require rocket engines for descent. Orbital speed around the Moon can, depending on altitude, exceed 1500 m/s. Spacecraft on impact trajectories can have speeds well in excess of that. In the vacuum the only way to decelerate from that speed
2093-401: Is to use a rocket engine. The stages of landing can include: Lunar landings typically end with the engine shutting down when the lander is several feet above the lunar surface. The idea is that engine exhaust and lunar regolith can cause problems if they were to be kicked back from the surface to the spacecraft, and thus the engines cut off just before touchdown. Engineers must ensure that
2184-666: The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder. Notes: The CLPS contracts for landers and lander missions do not include the payloads themselves. The payloads are developed under separate contracts either at NASA facilities or in commercial facilities. The CLPS landers provide landing, support services, and sample return as specified in each individual contract. The first batch of science payloads are being developed in NASA facilities, due to
2275-549: The Lunokhod robotic lunar rover in 1970 and 1973. Luna achieved a total of seven successful soft-landings out of 27 landing attempts. The United States' Surveyor program first soft-landed Surveyor 1 on June 2, 1966, this initial success was followed by four additional successful soft-landings, the last occurring on January 10, 1968. The Surveyor program achieved a total of five successful soft landings out of seven landing attempts through January 10, 1968. Surveyor 6 even did
2366-457: The Moon . Most landing sites are near the lunar south pole where they will scout for lunar resources , test in situ resource utilization (ISRU) concepts, and perform lunar science to support the Artemis lunar program . CLPS is intended to buy end-to-end payload services between Earth and the lunar surface using fixed-price contracts . The program achieved the first landing on the Moon by
2457-686: The United States , the Soviet Union cancelled both the N1 Rocket and the LK Lunar Module programs without any further development. The Chinese Lunar Exploration Program (also known as the Chang'e project) includes robotic lander, rover, and sample-return components; the program realized an initial successful lunar soft-landing with the Chang'e 3 spacecraft on 14 December 2013. As of 2023,
2548-404: The payload , flight rate, propulsive requirements, and configuration constraints. Other important design factors include overall energy requirements, mission duration, the type of mission operations on the lunar surface, and life support system if crewed. The relatively high gravity (higher than all known asteroids, but lower than all Solar System planets) and lack of lunar atmosphere negates
2639-466: The 2023–2024 timeframe. In June 2022, NASA announced the selection of two new payloads from its Payloads and Research Investigations on the Surface of the Moon (PRISM) call for proposals. The Lunar Vulkan Imaging and Spectroscopy Explorer (Lunar-VISE) investigation is a suite of five instruments, two of which will be mounted on a stationary lander and three mounted on a mobile rover to be provided as
2730-614: The 5th country to soft land on the moon. In January 2024, the first mission of the NASA-funded CLPS program, Peregrine Mission One , suffered a fuel leak several hours after launch, resulting in losing the ability to maintain attitude control and charge its battery, thereby preventing it from reaching lunar orbit and precluding a landing attempt. The probe subsequently burnt up in Earth's atmosphere. The second CLPS probe Odysseus landed successfully on 22 February 2024 on
2821-476: The 67-inch (170 cm) probes touched the surface. During Apollo 11 Neil Armstrong however touched down very gently by firing the engine until touchdown; some later crews shut down the engine before touchdown and felt noticeable bumps on landing, with greater compression of the landing struts. Commercial Lunar Payload Services Commercial Lunar Payload Services ( CLPS ) is a NASA program to hire companies to send small robotic landers and rovers to
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2912-468: The CLEP has achieved three successful soft-landings out of three landing attempts, namely Chang'e 3 , Chang'e 4 and Chang'e 5 . Chang'e 4 made history by making humanity's first ever soft-landing on the far side of the moon. Israel's SpaceIL attempted a robotic lunar landing by its Beresheet lander on 4 April 2019; the attempt failed. As of 2023, SpaceIL has plans for another soft-landing attempt using
3003-530: The CLPS initiative. This was the first delivery awarded to Firefly Aerospace, which would provide the lunar delivery service using its Blue Ghost lander, designed and developed at the company Cedar Park facility. The next (seventh, not counting the OrbitBeyond contract) CLPS contract was awarded by NASA on November 17, 2021 to Intuitive Machines, their 3rd award. Their Nova-C lander was contracted to land four NASA payloads (about 92 kg in total) to study
3094-582: The Chinese Chang'e 3 lander used a similar technique, falling 4m after its engine shut down. Perhaps the most famous lunar landers, those of the Apollo Program , were robust enough to handle the drop once their contact probes detected that landing was imminent. The landing gear was designed to withstand landings with engine cut-out at up to 10 feet (3.0 m) of height, though it was intended for descent engine shutdown to commence when one of
3185-611: The Czech company ADVACAM , will be onboard the Nova-C lunar lander. This payload is designed to monitor the radiation field on the Moon and help understand how to protect crew and equipment from the negative effects of cosmic rays. This marks the first Czech payload planned to be delivered to the Moon's surface. Space technology company Lunar Outpost will send their first lunar rover, the Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP), on this mission in
3276-516: The IM-2 mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than January 2025, and a third Nova-C lander on the IM-3 mission is scheduled for no earlier than October 2025. SpaceX is under contract to provide Falcon 9 launches for each of the three landers. In 2017, Space Policy Directive 1 signaled the intention of returning NASA astronauts to the Moon. NASA documents obtained by The New York Times suggested
3367-565: The IM-2 mission. The μNova (Micro-Nova) Hopper will separate from the Nova-C lander after landing and function as a standalone hopper lander, exploring multiple difficult-to-reach areas such as deep craters on the lunar surface. A lunar communications satellite will be deployed on this mission to facilitate communications between the lander and ground stations on Earth. Spaceflight will deliver rideshare payloads on this mission aboard its Sherpa EScape (Sherpa-ES) space tug called Geo Pathfinder . The MiniPIX TPX3 SPACE payload, provided by
3458-466: The Malapert A crater. The line of approach brought Odysseus in from the northeast over Schomberger crater. Upon initial contact with the lunar surface, the lander broke a leg off of the hexagonal body, and bounced back along the line of approach, with the main engine and RCS firing to null out vertical and lateral velocities. After landing vertically, the lander slowly settled onto the lunar surface with
3549-428: The Moon for NASA's CLPS. Launch was envisioned for either 2021 or 2022. The rover would carry science payloads yet to be determined and developed by other providers, that would focus on scouting and creating 3D maps of a polar region for signs of water ice or lunar pits for entrances to Moon caves. The rover would operate mostly autonomously for up to one week. On November 18, 2019, NASA added five contractors to
3640-623: The Moon have been identified by NASA. When the concept study on the Resource Prospector rover was cancelled in April 2018, NASA officials explained that lunar surface exploration would continue in the future, but using commercial lander services under a new CLPS program. Later that April, NASA announced the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program as the first step in the solicitation for flights to
3731-462: The Moon, marking the United States' first unmanned lunar soft-landing in over 50 years. This mission is the first private -NASA partnership to land on the Moon and the first landing using cryogenic propellants . However, the mission experienced some anomalies, including tipping-over on one side on the lunar surface; an off-nominal initial lunar orbit, a non-functioning landing LIDAR instrument, and apparently low communication bandwidth . Later it
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3822-554: The Moon. In April 2018, CLPS issued a Draft Request for Proposal, and in September 2018 the CLPS Request for Proposal was issued as a formal solicitation. On November 29, 2018, NASA announced the first nine companies that would be allowed to bid on contracts, which were indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts with a combined maximum contract value of $ 2.6 billion over ten years. In February 2018, NASA issued
3913-399: The Moon. The lunar thermal environment is influenced by the length of the lunar day. Temperatures can swing between approximately −250 to 120 °C (−418.0 to 248.0 °F) (lunar night to lunar day). These extremes occur for fourteen Earth days each, so thermal control systems must be designed to handle long periods of extreme cold or heat. Most spacecraft instruments must be kept within
4004-408: The Moon. In 2021, Intuitive Machines received a NASA contract that was initially valued at US$ 77 million to conduct lunar landings for NASA. After contract modifications, the total contract value came to US$ 118 million in 2024. The lander structure is a hexagonal cylinder with six landing legs and is 3.938 m (12.92 ft) tall. It has a launch mass of 1,908 kg (4,206 lb) and can hold
4095-599: The Nova-C lander (APL magnetometer, SwRI plasma spectrometer, and Redwire camera arrays) and on a Lunar Outpost rover (APL magnetometer and Canadensys microscopic imager). APL also provided overall management, systems engineer, SMA, and rover integration and testing. Additional IM-3 payloads include the Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Explorers (CADRE) rovers, ESA's MoonLIGHT Pointing Actuator (MPAc) and KASI's Lunar Space Environment Monitor (LUSEM). IM-4
4186-474: The Nova-C lander may be based using In-situ resource utilization (ISRU) (off-world resource processing technologies). The Nova-C lander technology platform can be scaled up to mid and large lander classes, capable of accommodating larger payloads. In an interview with NASA recorded in October 2023, Tim Crain, CTO of Intuitive Machines, mentioned the possible development of a Nova-D lander. Early reports of
4277-502: The RCS produces 4.45 N (1 lbf) of thrust. At launch Nova-C is filled with 845 kg (1,863 lb) of liquid oxygen, 422 kg (930 lb) kg of liquid methane and 17 kg (37 lb) of gaseous helium. Propellant is loaded onto Nova-C at the launch pad alongside propellant loading of the launch vehicle . Use of liquid methane and liquid oxygen is believed to be an enabling technology for future deep space missions. Propellants aboard
4368-513: The South pole-Aitken basin on the lunar far side at 22:23 UTC on 1 June 2024. After the completion of sample collection and the placement of the sample on the ascender by the probe's robotic drill and robotic arm, the ascender successfully took off from atop the lander portion of the probe at 23:38 UTC on 3 June 2024. The ascender docked with the Chang'e 6 service module (the orbiter) in lunar orbit at 06:48 UTC on 6 June 2024 and subsequently completed
4459-613: The Surface of the Moon (PRISM), Development and Advancement of Lunar Instrumentation (DALI), Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) Instruments and Artemis Surface Instruments. LDEP aspires to conduct at least two CLPS missions per year. Delivery missions for these payloads were solicited in batches. The first twelve NASA payloads and experiments were announced on February 21, 2019, and will fly on separate missions. As of February 2021 NASA has awarded contracts for four CLPS lander missions to support these payloads. On July 1, 2019, NASA announced
4550-621: The agency would involve the private spaceflight sector in the effort. In 2018, NASA solicited bids from nine companies, including Intuitive Machines, for the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. CLPS is part of the NASA Artemis program ; one of the long term goals of Artemis is establishing a permanent crewed base on the Moon . Intuitive Machines was one of three service providers awarded task orders in 2019 for delivery of NASA science payloads to
4641-517: The approved prime contractors can bid. A Scope Of Work will be issued with each task order. The CLPS proposals are being evaluated against five Technical Accessibility Standards. NASA is assuming a cost of one million dollars per kilogram delivered to the lunar surface. (This figure may be revised after a lunar landing when the actual costs are available.) The companies selected are considered "main contractors" that can sub-contract projects to other companies of their choice. The first companies granted
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#17327974346284732-415: The atmospheres of the bodies on which they landed to slow their descent using parachutes, reducing the amount of fuel they were required to carry. This in turn allowed larger payloads to be landed on these bodies for a given amount of fuel. For example, the 900-kg Curiosity rover was landed on Mars by a craft having a mass (at the time of Mars atmospheric entry) of 2400 kg, of which only 390 kg
4823-691: The company shared IM-2 entered into its final assembly stage. The primary payload, PRIME-1 , includes the TRIDENT ice drill to sample ice from below the lunar surface and the MSolo mass spectrometer to measure the amount of ice in the samples. ILO-1 prime contractor Canadensys is working to deliver "a flight-ready low-cost optical payload for the ILO-1 mission, ruggedized for the Moon South Pole environment". It could potentially be ready for integration on
4914-586: The first methalox spacecraft to land on an off-world celestial body. After the landing Odysseus was resting on the surface at a 30° angle with the horizontal. It has been confirmed by Tim Crain, CTO of Intuitive Machines, that one of the landing leg struts broke off during the landing, and that the lander is resting on a helium tank and/or a computer shelf that was strapped outside of the main fuselage. Based on telemetry received by mission controllers Odysseus appeared in "good health." The antennas were not vertically aligned as initially planned, and transmissions from
5005-423: The group of companies eligible to bid to deliver large payloads to the lunar surface under the CLPS program: Blue Origin , Ceres Robotics , Sierra Nevada Corporation , SpaceX , and Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems . On April 8, 2020, NASA announced it had awarded the fourth (after Astrobotic's, Intuitive Machines' and OrbitBeyond's awards) CLPS contract for Masten Space Systems . The contract, worth $ 75.9 million,
5096-464: The group of companies who are eligible to bid to send large payloads to the surface of the Moon with the CLPS program. On April 8, 2020, NASA selected Masten Space Systems for a mission to deliver and operate eight payloads – with nine science and technology instruments – to the Moon's South Pole in 2022. Masten Space Systems filed for bankruptcy in July 2022; this led to the cancellation of Masten's CLPS mission. On February 4, 2021, NASA awarded
5187-590: The in-development Nova-D state that it will use two of the VR-900 engines and be capable of carrying more than 500 kg to the lunar surface. In August 2024, Intuitive Machines proposed a mission to deliver NASA's VIPER rover to the Moon on a Nova-D lander no earlier than late 2027. Intuitive Machines is developing another lander, the Nova-M which, according to early reports, will use two VR-3500 engines originally developed for Boeing and their HLS to carry 5,000 kg to
5278-407: The initial award to Astrobotic had grown to $ 108 million, to carry five NASA science payloads instead of the initial number of 14, and that the contract value for Intuitive Machines had increased to $ 118 million. On July 1, 2019, a $ 5.6 million contract was awarded to Astrobotic and its partner Carnegie Mellon University to develop MoonRanger , a 13 kg (29 lb) rover to carry payloads on
5369-428: The initial commercial landers. The first landers and rovers will be technology demonstrators on hardware such as precision landing/hazard avoidance, power generation ( solar and RTGs ), in situ resource utilization ( ISRU ), cryogenic fluid management, autonomous operations and sensing , and advanced avionics , mobility, mechanisms, and materials . This program requires that only US launch vehicles can launch
5460-402: The interaction of the solar wind and plasma with the lunar surface. This mission would be the first CLPS mission to target the lunar far side, and aims to be the second landing (after China's Chang'e-4 ) to the Moon's far side. The mission would also develop and deploy two data relay satellites, a must for missions in the lunar far side. Many companies are involved in the mission with Draper being
5551-409: The lander were somewhat reduced. Both science and engineering data were received from the lander. It was hoped that a data link could be restored with Odysseus after lunar sunrise occurs at Malapert A crater, although this was not a requirement of the mission, On March 23 Intuitive Machines announced that Odysseus would not wake up and that the mission had ended Odysseus touched down on the Moon in
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#17327974346285642-440: The lander were stored in composite over-wrap liner-less cryogenic tanks. Thermodynamic venting systems provide cryogenic cooling. Nova-C landers use solar panels as a source of electrical power. Most areas of the lunar surface are sunlit during lunar days , which last approximately fourteen Earth days. Electrical power is generated by a photovoltaic system with three solar panels, a top deck panel and two body panels, generating
5733-424: The lander. Nokia's equipment is a Network-In-a-Box and will connect the Nova-C lander with Lunar Outpost's MAPP rover and IM's Micro-Nova Hopper. This 4G / LTE network will provide more bandwidth than the more conventional ultra-high frequency (UHF) systems used for space communication. Nokia says they hope that future missions will use shared infrastructure to interlink bases on the lunar surface. NASA selected
5824-462: The lunar south pole, but on 19 August 2023 the lander crashed on the Moon's surface. Japan's Smart Lander for Investigating Moon made a successful lunar landing with wrong attitude, bleak signal bandwidth and even after losing one of its engines during descent but within 100 m (330 ft) of its landing spot on 19 January 2024. It carried two small LEV rovers on board deployed sepqrately, just before SLIM's touchdown. It's landing made Japan
5915-583: The lunar surface. Lunar lander A lunar lander or Moon lander is a spacecraft designed to land on the surface of the Moon . As of 2024, the Apollo Lunar Module is the only lunar lander to have ever been used in human spaceflight, completing six lunar landings from 1969 to 1972 during the United States' Apollo Program . Several robotic landers have reached the surface, and some have returned samples to Earth. The design requirements for these landers depend on factors imposed by
6006-431: The main aim of its mission. China launched Chang'e 6 from China's Hainan Island on 3 May 2024; this mission seeks to conduct the first lunar sample return from the far side of the Moon . This is China's second lunar sample return mission, the first was successfully completed by Chang'e 5 when it returned 1.731 kg of lunar near side material to the Earth on 16 December 2020. The Chang'e 6 lander successfully landed in
6097-496: The middle of a lunar day, and was expected to remain functional for approximately six Earth days (until February 27), when the cold lunar night will set in and the solar panels will no longer be able to supply power. IM engineers announced that they may be able to maintain communication with Odysseus for an additional 10 to 20 hours after the sun has gone down over the Odysseus landing site, due to Odysseus' s battery capacity. It
6188-483: The mission was signed in 2021, with later modifications. The mission launched 15 February 2024 on a Falcon 9 launch vehicle and landed with a "rough" - soft landing on 22 February 2024 in the South Pole region of the moon, approximately at 80.13° South latitude and 1.44° East longitude, inside a shallow 1 km diameter crater with a 12° slope. The lander came to rest about 1.5 km away from the intended landing site near
6279-400: The next lunar day. Odysseus' s "rough" - soft Moon landing is the first soft landing of any kind for an American made spacecraft since Apollo 17 , more than 50 years ago, and the first by a private company . The soft Odysseus landing also qualifies the Odysseus mission as the first liquid methane and liquid oxygen ( methalox ) powered spacecraft to fire beyond low earth orbit, as well as
6370-594: The only method of descent and landing that can provide sufficient thrust with current technology is based on chemical rockets . In addition, the Moon has a long solar day . Landers will be in direct sunlight for more than two weeks at a time, and then in complete darkness for another two weeks. This causes significant problems for thermal control. As of 2019, space probes have landed on all three bodies other than Earth that have solid surfaces and atmospheres thick enough to make aerobraking possible: Mars , Venus , and Saturn's moon Titan . These probes were able to leverage
6461-489: The prime contractor, including ispace . On September 29, 2023, ispace announced that the SERIES-2 lander had been comprehensively redesigned and renamed as APEX 1.0, causing the mission to be delayed to 2026. Masten Space Systems filed for bankruptcy in July 2022, with nearly all their assets sold to Astrobotic Technology . This led to the cancellation of Masten's CLPS mission. On March 14, 2023, NASA awarded Firefly
6552-424: The program (not counting one mission contract that was revoked after awarding and another mission contract that was cancelled after the contracted company went bankrupt). NASA has been planning the exploration and use of natural lunar resources for many years. A variety of exploration, science, and technology objectives that could be addressed by regularly sending instruments, experiments and other small payloads to
6643-408: The right to bid on CLPS contracts were chosen in 2018. On May 21, 2019, three companies were awarded lander contracts: Astrobotic Technology , Intuitive Machines , OrbitBeyond . On July 29, 2019, NASA announced that it had granted OrbitBeyond's request to be released from this specific contract, citing "internal corporate challenges." On November 18, 2019, NASA added five new contractors to
6734-408: The selection of twelve additional payloads, provided by universities and industry. Seven of these are scientific investigations while five are technology demonstrations. In June 2021, NASA announced the selection of three payloads from its Payloads and Research Investigations on the Surface of the Moon (PRISM) call for proposals. These payloads will be sent to Reiner Gamma and Schrödinger Basin in
6825-712: The short time available before the first planned flights. Subsequent selections include payloads provided by universities and industry. Calls for payloads are planned to be released each year for additional opportunities. The Lunar Discovery and Exploration Program (LDEP) within the NASA Science Mission Directorate establishes contracts for the CLPS program and selects lunar science instruments that will use CLPS services. The CLPS Lunar Instrument Development process includes NASA Provided Lunar Payloads (NPLP), Lunar Surface Instrument and Technology Payloads (LSITP), Payloads and Research Investigations on
6916-434: The spacecraft. The mass of the landers and rovers can range from miniature to 1,000 kg (2,200 lb), with a 500 kg (1,100 lb) lander targeted to launch in 2022. The Draft Request for Proposal's covering letter states that the contracts will last up to 10 years. As NASA's need to send payloads to the lunar surface (and other cislunar destinations) arises, it will issue Firm-Fixed Price 'task orders' on which
7007-466: The table; they are added as their initial robotic and/or crewed landers are launched from Earth. The term landing attempt as used here includes any mission that was launched with the intent to land on the Moon, including all missions which failed to reach lunar orbit for any reason. A landing attempt by a spacecraft is classified as full success if it lands intact on the Moon and is situated in its designed orientation/attitude and fully functional, while
7098-435: The top solar array pointed in the general direction of Schomberger crater. One of the rectangular arrays, originally intended to be vertical, is on top and angled 30° with the horizontal, or about 18° with the lunar surface. IM announced that until entering standby mode on February 29, 2024, Odysseus had transmitted over 350 megabytes of science and engineering data from all payloads, and it will try to revive Odysseus during
7189-548: The transfer of the sample container to the Earth rentry module at 07:24 UTC on the same day. The orbiter then left lunar orbit on 20 June 2024 with the returner, which landed in Inner Mongolia on 25 June 2024, completing China's lunar far side sample return mission. The following table details the success rates of past and on-going lunar soft-landing attempts by robotic and crewed lunar-landing programs. Landing programs which have not launched any probes are not included in
7280-539: The use of aerobraking , so a lander must use propulsion to decelerate and achieve a soft landing . The Luna program was a series of robotic impactors, flybys, orbiters, and landers flown by the Soviet Union between 1958 and 1976. Luna 9 was the first spacecraft to achieve a soft landing on the Moon on February 3, 1966, after 11 unsuccessful attempts. Three Luna Spacecraft returned lunar soil samples to Earth from 1972 to 1976. Two other Luna spacecraft soft-landed
7371-481: The vehicle is protected enough to ensure that the fall without thrust does not cause damage. The first soft lunar landing, performed by the Soviet Luna 9 probe, was achieved by first slowing the spacecraft to a suitable speed and altitude, then ejecting a payload containing the scientific experiments. The payload was stopped on the lunar surface using airbags, which provided cushioning as it fell. Luna 13 used
7462-548: The vicinity of the Reiner Gamma swirl. The Reiner Gamma landing site was announced for the first PRISM opportunity and the JHU Applied Physics Laboratory 's Lunar Vertex payload was selected to conducted a detailed scientific analysis of the surface and surface environment. David Blewett (APL) is the principal investigator and leads the science team. Lunar Vertex includes payload elements on
7553-488: Was also announced that the Odysseus data feed back to Earth has been sending back payload related science data as well as images. IM and NASA held a joint press conference on February 28 to discuss and review the IM-1 mission. IM was selected in October 2020 in order to land its second Nova-C lander near the lunar south pole . As of September 2024, IM-2 is expected to be launched no earlier than January 2025. In May 2024,
7644-406: Was announced and awarded by NASA in September 2024 for a launch in 2027. Intuitive Machines have indicated that they are working on a 'commercial' mission, named IM-C1. The Nova-C lander was designed to be compatible with methane and oxygen fuel sources that are believed to be available on both the Moon and on Mars . For future missions, methane and oxygen could potentially be "harvested" wherever
7735-410: Was for Masten's XL-1 lunar lander to deliver payloads from NASA and other customers to the south pole of the Moon in late 2022. On June 11, 2020, NASA awarded Astrobotic Technology its second CLPS contract. The mission would be the first flight of Astrobotic's larger Griffin lander. Griffin weighs 450 kg. The award was for $ 199.5 million which covers Griffin lander and launch costs. The mission
7826-432: Was fuel. In comparison, the much lighter (292 kg) Surveyor 3 landed on the Moon in 1967 using nearly 700 kg of fuel. The lack of an atmosphere, however, removes the need for a Moon lander to have a heat shield and also allows aerodynamics to be disregarded when designing the craft. Although it has much less gravity than Earth, the Moon has sufficiently high gravity that descent must be slowed considerably. This
7917-426: Was launched by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on 15 February 2024, reached lunar orbit on 21 February, and landed on the lunar surface on 22 February. This marked the inaugural Nova-C landing on the Moon and the first American spacecraft to perform a soft landing on the Moon in over 50 years. It is the first spacecraft to use methalox propulsion to navigate between the Earth and the Moon. The second Nova-C lander with
8008-404: Was revealed that, though it landed successfully, one of the lander's legs broke upon landing and it tilted up on other side, 18° due to landing on a slope, but the lander survived and payloads are functioning as expected. EagleCam was not ejected prior to landing. It was later ejected on 28 February but was partially failure as it returned all types of data, except post IM-1 landing images that were
8099-456: Was scheduled for December 2022, using a Falcon 9 rocket. On February 4, 2021, NASA awarded a CLPS contract to Firefly Aerospace , of Cedar Park, Texas , for approximately $ 93.3 million, to deliver a suite of 10 science investigations and technology demonstrations to the Moon in 2023 (later delayed to 2024). This was the sixth award (seventh counting the OrbitBeyond award that was later cancelled) for lunar surface delivery (a lunar lander) under
8190-453: Was scheduled for November 2024. On October 16, 2020, NASA awarded Intuitive Machines their second CLPS contract for Intuitive Machines Mission 2 (IM-2). The contract was worth approximately $ 47 million. Using a Nova-C lander, the mission would land a drill ( PRIME-1 ) combined with a mass spectrometer near the Lunar south pole , to attempt harvesting ice from below the surface. The mission
8281-545: Was the lunar lander developed by the Soviet Union as a part of several Soviet crewed lunar programs . Several LK lunar modules were flown without crew in low Earth orbit , but the LK lunar module never flew to the Moon, as the development of the N1 Rocket Launch Vehicle required for the lunar flight suffered setbacks (including several launch failures), and after the first human Moon landings were achieved by
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