2024-02-08 04:01:49
American companies are preparing to launch a new unmanned module to the Moon on February 14, in the middle of Valentine’s Day, and less than a month after a similar mission failed when the ship burned in the Earth’s atmosphere, reported this Wednesday. The NASA.
The next attempt will feature a lunar landing module built by Houston-based Intuitive Machines, attached to the top of a SpaceX rocket, according to the US space agency.
The previous failed launch used a United Launch Alliance rocket and an Astrobotics module.
SpaceX plans to take off at 00:57 local time (0557 GMT) on February 14 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and the Nova-C module is expected to land on February 22, in a crater near the south pole of the Moon .
NASA paid Intuitive Machines more than $100 million to send its scientific hardware on the mission, part of a broader strategy to stimulate a lunar economy and delegate routine cargo missions to the private sector.
The Nova-C lander’s payload includes instruments to better understand the lunar environment, as NASA prepares to send human crew to the celestial body under the Artemis program later this decade.
It also includes a more colorful loadout with sculptures by artist Jeff Koons.
The stakes remain high with this mission: achieving the first US soft landing on the lunar surface since the end of the Apollo era five decades ago, and the first by private industry.
Only five countries have achieved lunar landings without difficulty. The Soviet Union was the first, followed by the United States, which remains the only one to have put astronauts on the lunar surface. China has achieved this three times in the last decade, in addition to India and, more recently, Japan.
The Japanese lunar module landed on the moon on January 20, but ended up on its side, with the solar panels out of adjustment.
Astrobotic’s failure was the third failed attempt at non-governmental missions, after an Israeli nonprofit and a Japanese company crashed in 2019 and 2023, respectively.
Landing on the Moon is complicated by the steep terrain and lack of atmosphere, meaning parachutes are not an option and a spacecraft has to use its thrusters to achieve a controlled descent.
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