Odysseus is the first spacecraft sent from the United States to land on the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. Intuitive Machines is a company in Houston, who created this robotic explorer, announced that it successfully landed on the moon’s surface on Thursday evening.
Odysseus has now successfully made history with its lunar touch.
Before reaching the moon’s surface with their Odysseus spacecraft, the engineers at Intuitive Machines discovered some important parts of navigation system were not working properly.
Luckily, NASA was one of the customers associated with this mission and they had a special tool on the Odysseus spacecraft that they could offer to replace the broken navigation part.
Your order was delivered… to the Moon! 📦@Int_Machines‘ uncrewed lunar lander landed at 6:23pm ET (2323 UTC), bringing NASA science to the Moon’s surface. These instruments will prepare us for future human exploration of the Moon under #Artemis. pic.twitter.com/sS0poiWxrU
— NASA (@NASA) February 22, 2024
With this great help from NASA, Engineers were able to bypass Odysseus’s broken parts and successfully land the spacecraft by using two lasers that are part of NASA Doppler Lidar (NDL).
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson congratulated Intuitive Machines on their successful touch on the moon.
Today, for the first time in half a century, America has returned to the Moon 🇺🇸.
On the eighth day of a quarter-million-mile voyage, @Int_Machines aced the landing of a lifetime.
What a feat for IM, @SpaceX & @NASA.
What a triumph for humanity.
Odysseus has taken the Moon. pic.twitter.com/JwtCQmMS2K
— Bill Nelson (@SenBillNelson) February 23, 2024
NASA’s next moon mission i.e., ‘Artemis 2’ is scheduled for September 2025, it is a total 8 days mission that will send 3 NASA astronauts and one Canadian space agency astronaut.
‘Artemis 3’ is scheduled for 2026. ‘Artemis 3’ is planned for the first crew lunar landing which will mark the first time Americans return to walk on the moon since the Apollo 17 mission back in December 1972.