The IM-1 Odysseus lander will land near crater Malapert A in the Moon’s south polar region. The landing site, 300 km from the South Pole, is not far from those of India’s Chandrayaan missions.

Landing will occur near the full-moon phase. The lander will have ~7 days for operations before it succumbs to the long cold lunar night. Like other recent landers, Odysseus uses solar panels, not RTGs to generate heat and power.

quickmap.lroc.asu.edu/?camera=…
#Space
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Intuitive Machines IM-1 will take a more traditional direct route to the moon, arriving and landing ~9 days after launch.

It will land vertically on its 6 legs, using its single 3D-printed continuously-running engine.

Various navigation aids will be used to select the final landing site in real time. During the last 10m of descent, Odysseus will use inertial measurements only, not cameras or lasers, to deal with lunar dust kicking up from the lander’s engine.

intuitivemachines.com/_files/u…
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Here is an overview of the Intuitive Machines Nova-C spacecraft and lander.

The lander structure is a hexagonal cylinder with six landing legs. Nova-C is mostly made of carbon fiber and titanium.

The vertically oriented solar panels can generate 200 W of power on the lunar surface. The Sun will be low at the site.

The pressure-fed 3D-printed VR900 main engine uses methane and oxygen as liquid propellants, pressurized by helium gas, to produce 4,000 N of thrust.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitiv…
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The IM-1 lunar lander will host a number of govt. and commercial payloads; each will have about 7 days to finish their tasks.

NASA has 6 payloads to study plume-surface interactions, space weather/lunar surface interactions, radio astronomy, precision landing technologies, and a communication and navigation node for future autonomous navigation technologies.

See table below for the list of payloads. Thankfully, no human remains.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitiv…
intuitivemachines.com/_files/u…
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Here is an impressive animation of the Intuitive Machines IM-1 mission - from launch, to cruise, to moon orbit insertion, to landing.

Less than 24 hours to go for launch at 12:57 a.m. ET, Wed Feb 14 from KSC.

youtu.be/Rb_ZjcBdAaw
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Intuitive Machines IM-1 Mission Animation

Intuitive Machines' IM-1 mission will return the United States to the lunar surface with the Texas-based company's Nova-C lunar lander. Nova-C will be the fi...

^YouTube

Intuitive Machines is a participant in NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.

There are at least 14 companies selected and partially funded by NASA in the program. See table below.

Science and technology payloads sent in these missions will help lay the foundation for human missions and a sustainable presence on the lunar surface by govt and commercial entities.

nasa.gov/reference/commercial-…
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Let's send our best wishes for the success of the Intuitive Machines IM-1 mission to the moon.

Landing on the moon has turned out to be harder than we thought, as evident from the poor success rate in such missions over the past few years. See table below.
🤞
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The Sun will stay low in the sky near the landing site of IM-1, which is near crater Malapert A at co-ords 80.18 S, 356.2 E. See graph below.

Which is why the solar panels face sideways instead of up. Also, the Sun's intensity is not affected by the low elevation angle, since the moon does not have an atmosphere.

The lander has until March 3 to finish its tasks before the Sun disappears below the horizon for 14 earth days, dropping temps. to electronics killing values.

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Weather looks good for launch of the Intuitive Machines IM-1 mission to the moon, less than 6 hours from now.

patrick.spaceforce.mil/Portals…
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Launch of Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 mission scrubbed due to "off-nominal methane temperatures prior to stepping into methane load."

New launch time: 1:05 a.m. ET Thursday, Feb. 15.

Credit: SpaceX
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Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 spacecraft was successfully launched few hours ago and is now on its way to a landing near the lunar south pole ~9 days from now.

Check out previous posts in this thread for more info on the mission.

Credit: SpaceX
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And here is a beautiful image taken by the Intuitive Machines IM-1 spacecraft, looking back at the Falcon 2nd stage and at Earth, shortly after separation.

Also yesterday, the IM team successfully fired the first liquid methane and liquid oxygen engine in space, when it was 270K km from earth. This is the main engine on the IM-1 lander which will be used for lunar orbit insertion and during landing.

There are 3 additional images and news updates at
intuitivemachines.com/im-1
#Space
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And here is another perfectly framed image taken by the camera onboard the Intuitive Machines IM-1 spacecraft of the Blue Marble.

Outstanding!

You can bet this pic will be featured on APOD soon.

There are additional images and news updates at
intuitivemachines.com/im-1
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