HOUSTON — Intuitive Machines’ first lunar lander is complete and able to ship for a launch next month as executives say they’re cautiously optimistic in regards to the prospects of a successful landing.
The corporate unveiled its accomplished Nova-C lander at its recent headquarters here Oct. 3, a day after completing a pre-ship review that confirmed that the spacecraft is able to be transported to the Kennedy Space Center for launch on a Falcon 9 on a mission designated IM-1.
That launch is scheduled for a six-day period that opens Nov. 16 from KSC’s Launch Complex 39A. The lander will separate from the upper stage 32 minutes after launch and start a five-day journey to the moon. A day after going into orbit across the moon, the spacecraft will attempt a landing at Malapert Crater, about 300 kilometers from the lunar south pole.
“We’re able to go,” Tim Crain, chief technology officer of Intuitive Machines, said in an interview. Engineers accomplished all testing of the vehicle’s hardware and software ahead of shipment with no remaining issues to take care of before launch. “We’re really pleased about where we’re.”
The most important issue now for launch is out of the corporate’s hands: “pad congestion” at Launch Complex 39A, the launch site for the mission. There are several launches ahead of IM-1 on that pad, including the Falcon Heavy launch of Psyche that was recently delayed every week to Oct. 12. IM-1 is required to launch from LC-39A because only that pad is configured to fuel the lander with methane and liquid oxygen propellants shortly before liftoff.
“We’re working with SpaceX to attempt to thread the needle,” Crain said. “We’ll be able to go on Nov. 16, but we’ve set to work through that pad congestion.” There may be a backup launch opportunity in mid-December if IM-1 doesn’t launch in November.
IM-1 is the corporate’s first lander mission and the primary that is an element of NASA’s Business Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, where the agency buys payload space on industrial landers. IM-1 is carrying five NASA payloads in addition to six industrial payloads from customers starting from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University to artist Jeff Koons.
IM-1 is in search of to develop into the primary non-governmental spacecraft to successfully land on the moon. Beresheet, by Israeli enterprise SpaceIL, crashed attempting to land on the moon in 2019, while HAKUTO-R M1 from Japanese company ispace crashed in a landing attempt in April.
Fewer than 45% of lunar landing missions, dating back to the start of the Space Age, have been successful, but Intuitive Machines executives expressed confidence within the changes IM-1 will make it to the surface successfully.
“I feel really good,” said Crain. He noted the corporate paid close attention to failed landing attempts to see if their Nova-C design was also prone to similar failure modes. For instance, the Beresheet lander suffered problems with its inertial measurement units (IMUs) during its descent. Crain said Nova-C has dissimilar redundant IMUs to avoid a scenario like that.
Steve Altemus, chief executive of Intuitive Machines, estimated the percentages of success at “upwards of 65% to 75%,” higher than the historical average. That’s based, he said, on the experience the corporate has built up with key technologies on the lander, akin to precision landing and its propulsion system.
It’s also based on lessons learned from those failed missions. “Each one in every of those things that we witnessed when it comes to anomalies that caused the failures of those missions, now we have internalized,” he said. “Due to this fact, I feel our odds are higher.”
Greater than just IM-1
Company executives emphasized they usually are not betting the corporate on a single lander mission. The identical high bay that has the finished IM-1 lander also has components for IM-2, able to be assembled in the approaching months.
“We have now a probability of failure. I’m pretty open about that,” Altemus said. “But now we have multiple missions to the moon. We have now other business lines that diversify us and insulate us from failure.”
The corporate has three NASA CLPS awards for lunar lander missions but has also moved into other business areas. The corporate teamed with KBR to win a NASA engineering services contract called Omnibus Multidiscipline Engineering Services (OMES) III earlier this 12 months that has a maximum value of $719 million over five years. Intuitive Machines also was one in every of three corporations that won recent Air Force Research Lab contracts to work on designs of nuclear-powered spacecraft.
“Have a look at Intuitive Machines as a diversified space exploration company,” Altemus said, with several lines of business. Along with its recent awards, the corporate is bidding on a NASA contract to supply communications services for its Near Space Network, supporting lunar missions, in addition to NASA’s Lunar Terrain Vehicle lunar rover for future Artemis crewed missions.
Intuitive Machines, he said, “is a contemporary instantiation of an aerospace company that isn’t tied to the standard cost-plus-award-fee contracting methods of the past but can live and work in a hard and fast price environment, and even NASA just buying a service.”
The corporate can also be publicly traded after going public in February through a SPAC merger. Doing so helps bring more attention to the corporate, he argued, but additionally scrutiny. “Investors might be fickle and be hard on us at times,” he acknowledged. “If I proceed to give attention to growing the business for the long run and looking out at creating real value for shareholders, that may win the day whether we succeed or fail in any given task.”
“We’re confident within the system we’re delivering to the Cape,” he said of IM-1, adding that employees are “elated” that the mission is nearing launch. “It’s time to go fly.”