One other month, one other day, one other strive on the moon.

A robotic lunar lander is scheduled to launch within the early morning hours of Thursday, sooner or later after a technical glitch postponed the first launch attempt. If all goes properly, it is going to grow to be the primary American spacecraft to set down softly on the moon’s floor for the reason that Apollo 17 moon touchdown in 1972.

Additionally it is the newest non-public effort to ship spacecraft to the moon. Earlier makes an attempt have all led to failure. However the firm in control of the newest effort, Intuitive Machines of Houston, is optimistic.

“I feel fairly confident that we’re going to be successful softly touching down on the moon,” stated Stephen Altemus, the president and chief government of Intuitive Machines. “We’ve done the testing. We’ve tested and tested and tested. As much testing as we could do.”

When is the launch and the way can I watch?

The Intuitive Machines lander, named Odysseus, is scheduled to launch at 1:05 a.m. Japanese time on Thursday on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy House Heart in Florida. About two hours earlier than the launch, NASA and SpaceX each introduced that climate continued to be about 90 p.c favorable to permit a launch to go ahead.

SpaceX and NASA are streaming protection of the launch, which you’ll be able to watch within the video participant embedded above.

SpaceX introduced late on Tuesday that it was suspending a launch try on Wednesday morning. The corporate stated in a publish on X that the temperature of methane gas for the lander was “off-nominal.” That drawback was overcome on Thursday. A couple of half-hour earlier than liftoff, the spacecraft was totally loaded with propellants and loading of the Falcon 9 rocket acquired underway. Shortly earlier than 1 a.m., SpaceX mission managers stated the rocket was “go for launch.”

If one other technical drawback or dangerous climate delays the launch, SpaceX can strive once more on Friday.

When and the place is the touchdown?

If the launch happens this week, the touchdown can be on Feb. 22 close to a crater named Malapert A. (Malapert A is a satellite tv for pc crater of the bigger Malapert crater, which is called after Charles Malapert, a Seventeenth-century Belgian astronomer.)

Odysseus will enter orbit across the moon about 24 hours earlier than the touchdown try.

The touchdown web site, about 185 miles from the south pole on the close to aspect of the moon, is comparatively flat, a better location for a spacecraft to land. No American spacecraft has ever landed on the lunar south pole, which is a spotlight of many house businesses and firms as a result of it could be wealthy in frozen water.

How massive is the spacecraft?

Intuitive Machines calls its spacecraft design Nova-C and named this explicit lander Odysseus. It’s a hexagonal cylinder with six touchdown legs, about 14 toes tall and 5 toes huge. Intuitive Machines factors out that the physique of the lander is roughly the scale of an previous British telephone sales space — that’s, just like the Tardis within the “Doctor Who” science fiction tv present.

At launch, with a full load of propellant, the lander weighs about 4,200 kilos.

What’s going to the moon?

NASA is the principle buyer for the Intuitive Machines flight; it’s paying the corporate $118 million to ship its payloads. NASA additionally spent an extra $11 million to develop and construct the six devices on the flight:

A laser retroreflector array to bounce again laser beams.
A LIDAR instrument to exactly measure the spacecraft’s altitude and velocity because it descends to the lunar floor.
A stereo digital camera to seize video of the plume of mud kicked up by the lander’s engines throughout touchdown.
A low-frequency radio receiver to measure the results of charged particles close to the lunar floor on radio indicators.
A beacon, Lunar Node-1, to display an autonomous navigation system.
An instrument within the propellant tank that’s to make use of radio waves to measure how a lot gas stays within the tank.

The lander can also be carrying a couple of different payloads, together with a digital camera constructed by college students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical College in Daytona Seaside, Florida; a precursor instrument for a future moon telescope; and an artwork challenge by Jeff Koons.

Wasn’t there simply one other American spacecraft headed to the moon?

On Jan. 8, Astrobotic Expertise despatched its Peregrine lander towards the moon. However a malfunction with its propulsion system shortly after launch prevented any chance of touchdown. Ten days later, as Peregrine swung again towards Earth, it burned up within the environment above the Pacific Ocean.

Each Odysseus and Peregrine are a part of NASA’s Industrial Lunar Payload Companies program, or CLPS. The article of this system is to make use of industrial firms to ship experiments to the moon fairly than NASA constructing and working its personal moon landers.

“We’ve always viewed these initial CLPS deliveries as being kind of a learning experience,” Joel Kearns, the deputy affiliate administrator for exploration in NASA’s science mission directorate, stated throughout a information convention on Tuesday.

The house company hopes this strategy can be less expensive, permitting it to ship extra missions extra regularly because it prepares to ship astronauts again to the moon as a part of its Artemis program.