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After a short journey to the Moon, Intuitive Machines’s NOVA C Odysseus lunar lander finally landed on the Moon and set multiple records. With its successful landing, Odysseus became the first lunar lander from an American company to land on the Moon. Additionally, it has also marked the start of NASA’s Artemis program by returning the U.S. to the lunar surface decades after the end of the Apollo program.
Intuitive Machines’ Nova C Becomes First U.S. Lander To Land On Moon After Apollo Era
Ahead of today’s landing, Intuitive Machines and NASA provided multiple updates about a potential landing time, with the final update sharing that the lander would make an additional orbit of the Moon before attempting to land on the lunar south pole. Today’s landing came after Odysseus adjusted its low lunar obit that initially brought forward its landing time. However, the subsequent additional lunar orbit caused another schedule change and moved it forward.
The lander was initially slated to land on the Moon at 6:24 p.m. Eastern Time, but Intuitive Machines’s mission control center in Texas could not confirm a soft landing 13 minutes after the landing time. However, the mission control did confirm by then that NOVA C’s equipment had made it to the surface of the Moon at 6:23 p.m. and was transmitting data, with Mission Controller Dr. Tim Crain confirming the event by sharing that “Houston, Odysseus has found his new home.”
NOVA-C’s journey to the Moon is the culmination of a startup esque effort by Intuitive Machines that saw the firm work 18 hour days to test its engines, employ a generous hiring policy by hiring qualified technicians on the spot and build advanced carbon composite structures. The need to ensure that the lunar lander is both strong and lightweight meant that Intuitive Machines had to rely on a honeycomb aluminum core, composite struts and face sheets and a linerless composite propellant tank for one of its most important components, the main engine.
This main engine enabled a much shorter journey to the Moon, and it was also responsible for slowing the spacecraft down for its landing. Unlike ships like the SpaceX Dragon designed to land on Earth, lunar landers do not have the luxury of a thick blanket of air to slow them down. As a result, they have to carefully calibrate their thrusters to ensure the right speed for a soft landing that does not damage them.
The lander’s mission profile plans to bring a plethora of instruments to the lunar surface. These include a camera that is intended to provide third person perspective of the lander and another one to capture the Milky Way galaxy. Another important project on NOVA C is a data center technology demonstration project by Lonestar Data. The project, called Independence,’ seeks to test the lunar surface as a backup for storing data, and Lonestar demonstrated the concept in space while NOVA C was traveling to the Moon by transmitting the Declaration of Independence to the lander and receiving the Bill of Rights in return.
While Intuitive Machines’s shares, trading as NASDAQ:LUNR, soared after the lander successfully started its journey in space, the stock had pared back the gains today ahead of the landing. However, with a successful landing, the shares are rising once again and are up by more than 30% in aftermarket trading – making Intuitive Machines one of the best performing stocks so far in 2024.