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The primary lunar lander aiming for a touchdown on the Moon’s south pole has a brand new launch date. Intuitive Machines said Friday it’s targeting the launch of its Nova-C lander on the IM-1 mission for no sooner than January 12, 2024.
Trent Martin, the Vice President of Lunar Access at Intuitive Machines, told Spaceflight Now it’s feeling to finally reach this point.
“We began this journey on IM-1 back in 2019. Hoping to launch slightly bit earlier. We bumped into some technical difficulties and solving those problems means getting so far, where you’ve a vehicle and it’s able to go launch, make it much more exciting because you recognize you solved some problems, some really technical, difficult problems,” said Martin, who was attending the von Braun Space Exploration Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.
“We’re ready and the vehicle’s tested and checked out. All the pieces we’d like to do is wrapped up and able to go. Just on the point of ship it all the way down to the Cape.”
Martin said the Nova-C lander might be transported from the corporate’s facilities in Houston, Texas, all the way down to Florida in late November for final pre-launch processing.
The IM-1 mission is certain for the Moon’s South Pole and is targeting a landing site near the Malapert A crater, which is situated at 80.4 degrees south and was chosen for its generally flat landscape.
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That landing site helps to drive each the launch date and the length of the launch window, Martin said. Basically, he said every month has a window around three to 6 days. They might land around five to seven days after launching from the Cape.
For IM-1, Martin said Jan. 12 is the beginning of the planned launch window that month and so they are working alongside their launch partner, SpaceX, to further refine the complete scope of that. Every day of the launch window holds an instantaneous launch opportunity.
“It’s a extremely hard orbital dynamics problem that requires not only my GNC (guidance, navigation and control) team, but additionally my landing team because we’re taking a look at the trajectories, we’re taking a look at the position of the Moon relative to the Earth at launch after which we’re taking a look at what’s the position of the Sun and the Earth at landing on the Moon,” Martin said. “So, you need to be sure that that we’ve got sunlight so we will power our systems and be sure that we’ve got communication back to the Earth.”
Martin said the primary couple of missions to the Moon for them will use direct-to-Earth transmissions for his or her communications.
A part of NASA’s industrial lunar efforts
The IM-1 mission is a component of NASA’s Business Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, a series of indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts which have a complete maximum value of $2.6 billion over a 10-year period. The undertaking was announced back in April 2018 with the primary task orders issued on March 26, 2019, to nine firms.
Intuitive Machines has been awarded three missions thus far The lander for the IM-1 mission carries with it six payloads for NASA:
- Lunar Node 1 Navigation Demonstrator (LN-1)
- Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS)
- Radio-wave Observations on the Lunar Surface of the photo Electron Sheath (ROLSES)
- Navigation Doppler Lidar for Precise Velocity and Range Sensing (NDL)
- Radio Frequency Mass Gauge (RFMG)
- Laser Retroreflector (LRA)
NASA described its suite of payloads as having a “deal with plume-surface interactions, space weather/lunar surface interactions, radio astronomy, precision landing technologies, and a communication and navigation node for future autonomous navigation technologies.”
“In some cases, on the NASA payloads, we’ve got a few payloads which might be operational through the landing,” Martin said. “And for those payloads, we’re gathering that data and we’ll send it back once we land on the Moon.”
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There are also a series of business payloads on board the lander, including considered one of Martin’s favorites: a camera system dubbed “EagleCam,” which was developed by students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. Intuitive Machines’ founder, Steve Altemus, issued a challenge to construct the camera during a campus visit in 2019.
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The camera is designed to capture a third-person perspective of the Nova-C lander touching down on the Moon’s surface.
“As we’re coming down, we’ll be about 30 meters above the surface, we fire EagleCam off with a CubeSat deployer and the camera itself is definitely multiple cameras, 4 cameras. In order this 1U CubeSat tumbles, it’s taking video imagery because it falls to the surface of the Moon,” Martin said. “From that, inside a day or two, we’ll have video of us landing on the Moon. So, I’m super excited for that one.”
Pathway to the Moon
Martin said it’ll take roughly five to seven days after launch for the lander to get to the Moon after which a few day before touching down on the surface, although the timeline will proceed to be refined as launch day approaches.
Operations might be run out of Intuitive Machine’s “Nova Control” center at the corporate’s headquarters in Houston.
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About 90 seconds after spacecraft separation from the Falcon 9’s second stage, the lander might be powered on and start to amass telemetry and other data in regards to the health of the spacecraft. Martin said inside a couple of hours of that point, they will even conduct an initial checkout of the engine with a test firing.
“We then do multiple trajectory burns to barely update our trajectory on the strategy to the Moon,” Martin said.
The ultimate trajectory burn will put them in orbit about 100 kilometers above the Moon’s surface where they’ll remain for about 24 hours as they plan their powered descent all the way down to the bottom, which lasts about quarter-hour.
The lander is meant to be in orbit across the Moon for roughly 24 hours since they’ve a cryogenic system. The longer they stay in orbit, the hotter the propellants turn out to be.
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“Once we start that burn, we don’t turn off the rocket engine. It stays lit your complete time all of the strategy to the surface. We do have the flexibility to regulate the thrust on our vehicle, so we will actually throttle down from our 100% burn all the way down to almost 20-25 percent of the general thrust,” Martin said.
While they do have a goal landing site in mind, there are backups and they’ll aim for the safest one for the lander. After touchdown, they’ll vent off remaining fuel before starting other operations.
The duration of the mission will run between six and 14 days, depending on where they land, and might be in operation 24-hours a day until it goes dark during lunar nighttime.
“When it goes dark, we fully intend, on these first missions, we will certainly lose power to the spacecraft and since of that, it is rather likely that it won’t turn back on,” Martin said. “We are going to try to turn it back on after the primary night, but when it doesn’t come back on, our goal is to finish all of our science objectives through the first [lunar] day.”
Moon history repeats itself
While SpaceX was in a position to use its launch pad at Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station for ispace’s Moon-bound lander, Intuitive Machine’s Nova-C lander must launch from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
The special accommodations are since the IM-1 lander uses a propellant mixture of liquid oxygen and liquid methane and wishes to be fueled on the launch pad within the run-up to launch.
But to do this, they should have access to the payload, which is where the crew and cargo access tower comes into play. One other such tower is within the works at SLC-40, nevertheless it won’t be fully operational in time for this mission.
“We actually do a wet dress rehearsal several days before the launch. So we are going to actually do a full fuel of our vehicle to make sure we’ve got the timeline down,” Martin said. “We would like to fuel as late as possible. SpaceX has been very accommodating and so they’re providing us a service that provides us liquid oxygen, liquid methane. They’ll replenish until the very last minute, in order that we’re as full as possible and we’ve got the very best likelihood of success at landing on the Moon.”
The importance of launching their mission to the Moon from the identical pad used through the Apollo era can be not lost on Martin or his team.
“39A is Apollo 11. Come on, you’ll be able to’t beat that! You’ve got Apollo, you’ve got Space Shuttle. I launched… payloads that I flew on Space Shuttle off of that. It’s form of coming home for me,” Martin said. “It’s the longer term with Artemis and CLPS and it’s the past with Apollo — all in a culmination of two latest space firms with SpaceX and Intuitive Machines launching off an Apollo pad.”
With Martin’s a long time long experience each in the federal government and personal space sectors, he’s seen quite a few payloads head as much as space. But he said it doesn’t diminish the sensation he gets each time it gets all the way down to launch time.
“When it gets there and it’s actually on the pad, and it’s rolled up and you’ll be able to see it, it’s like watching ‘The Right Stuff.’ It’s like watching any of the space movies,” Martin said. “You almost feel the music, the identical music that they play in Hollywood. You want feel it in your soul as you’re watching your spacecraft placed on board a launch vehicle knowing that the subsequent destination, on this case, the subsequent destination is the Moon. In our case, landing on the South Pole of the Moon.”
While the historical parallels are enticing, Martin said they’re also not losing sight of the daunting challenge that landing safely on the Moon presents. He said surmounting those challenges might be the important thing to opening up a successful Earth-Moon economy.
“You intend for years and also you develop hardware for years and software for years that you think that might be exactly what you wish, only to seek out it’s not exactly what you wish. And so, those lessons that we’re going to learn on this primary mission will apply to IM-2 and to IM-3,” Martin said. “I’m sure we are going to learn something that may change the way in which we operate the subsequent vehicle, that may change the way in which construct a bit of technology that we’ve got in the subsequent vehicle.”
“Hopefully we don’t have something that results in a catastrophic failure, nevertheless it’s possible, right? It’s a dangerous business that we’re in. We did our greatest to attenuate the danger as very best, but half the missions to the Moon have failed, even from the sovereign nations,” Martin added. “The proven fact that the Russians just tried just a couple of months ago and failed, tells you that it is difficult.”
Martin said as they’ve gone along, they’ve checked out the missions that succeeded in landing on the Moon, but additionally particularly those that failed. He said it’s key to grasp why those failed and learn from the mistakes of those that got here before them.
“We’re excited to go try these shots on goal and our hope is that we’re Michael Jordan — we hit each one — but there may be risk involved within the space business.”