A brand new private moon-landing mission could launch as soon as November.
Intuitive Machines says its moon lander could possibly be ready for liftoff as soon as Nov. 15, pending last-minute preparation. This to date positions the corporate to be the primary private enterprise to securely touch down on the moon.
“Our Nova-C lander is totally built,” Steve Altemus, co-founder and chief executive of Intuitive Machines, said in an earnings call Monday (Aug 15) attended by Ars Technica. “We’ll deliver a lunar lander able to go in September.”
The launch date on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, nevertheless, is determined by the busy schedule at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Altemus acknowledged. The present window runs through Nov. 20, with a backup opportunity in December.
The Houston-based company’s IM-1 mission is funded by the NASA Industrial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program that goals to place science and hardware on the moon. CLPS is partly in support of the greater Artemis program that goals to land astronauts on the moon’s south pole by the center of the last decade, on the earliest.
NASA asked earlier this 12 months to maneuver the landing location for IM-1 to the moon’s south pole, as a substitute of a more equatorial region, to place it consistent with the landing zone for Artemis 3 that’s planned for no sooner than 2025. IM-1’s launch was delayed by several months consequently of the choice. But at the moment, no other private mission has yet touched down on the moon.
The private Japanese Hakuto-R mission by ispace apparently crashed during an attempted landing in April. One other moon-landing effort using Israel’s Beresheet lander by SpaceIL also failed in 2019 during that country’s debut lunar surface attempt.
One other U.S. company funded by CLPS, Astrobotic, has its Peregrine landing mission on hold following delays with the brand new United Launch Alliance Vulcan Centaur rocket set to launch it. Centaur may now fly in late 2023 with Peregrine, on the earliest.
Other landing missions are within the works with CLPS as well, but Peregrine and IM-1 appear closest to launch given recent announcements.