After liftoff on February 26, Athena established a stable attitude, solar charging, and radio communications contact with our mission operations center in Houston. The lander is in excellent health, sending selfies, and preparing for a series of planned main engine firings to refine her trajectory ahead of lunar orbit insertion, planned on March 3. Intuitive Machines is targeting a lunar landing opportunity on March 6.
📸: #Athena 👀@spaceX
#AdLunam #IM2
(27FEB2025 0720 CT)
@Telenet Blijkbaar werkt alles al. Enkel alles eens uittrekken en herstarten…
Jammer dat de installatie instructies je naar de app sturen waar enkel foutmeldingen staan…
#destekkeraleensuitgetrokken
The sun doesn’t shine on parts of the Moon. Scientists believe those permanently shaded regions contain water ice below the lunar surface. To potentially discover water ice, IM-2 is taking NASA’s Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 to the lunar south pole to robotically sample and analyze ice from below the Moon's surface.
Intuitive Machines’ Micro Nova is a miniature Nova-C lander designed to search for water ice in permanently shaded regions of the Moon. Affectionately known as “The Hopper,” the spacecraft is designed to carry 8 kg of payloads up to 25 km from the IM-2 mission landing site.
Between the trajectory and the number of orbits around the Moon, Odysseus traveled the equivalent of two and a half times the distance to the lunar surface, a total of around 600,000 miles. We expect our IM-2 mission to travel approximately the same distance.
The IM-1 mission fundamentally changed the economics of landing on the Moon and opened the door for a robust, thriving cislunar economy in the future. It achieved the intractable technical challenges of landing on the Moon through a fixed-price performance contract in a constrained time period, demonstrating unprecedented economics and efficiency.
The American flag mounted to Odysseus' side closeout panel was certified for flight in 1970, during the height of the Apollo program. The NASA-donated flag didn't leave Earth during the Apollo program, but Odysseus completed its mission to the lunar surface on February 22, 2024.
Still kicking, Odysseus continues to operate on the lunar surface. At approximately 1100 CST flight controllers intend to downlink additional data and command Odie into a configuration that he may phone home if and when he wakes up when the sun rises again.
(29FEB2024 0922 CST)
Odysseus continues to generate solar power on the Moon, allowing flight controllers to continue gathering data from the south pole region in furtherance of the
IM-1 Mission objectives.
Flight controllers are analyzing new solar charging data and using the additional time to maximize tasks that further future exploration.
Intuitive Machines will participate in a news conference with NASA at the Johnson Space Center in Houston on February 28, 2024, at 2:00 pm ET to discuss the Company’s historic lunar mission.
https://t.co/dYabz6453r
(28FEB2024 0825 CST)
NASA and Intuitive Machines will co-host a televised news conference at 2 p.m. EST Wednesday, Feb. 28, from the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to highlight the IM-1 Mission.
https://t.co/a5k6ewqdNv
After troubleshooting communications, flight controllers have confirmed Odysseus is upright and starting to send data.
Right now, we are working to downlink the first images from the lunar surface.
Odysseus completed its scheduled 408-second main engine lunar orbit insertion burn and is currently in a 92 km circular lunar orbit. Initial data indicates the 800 m/s burn was completed within 2 m/s accuracy. 🧵1/4 (21FEB2024 0920 CST)
Intuitive Machines flight controllers commanded the IM-1 mission’s second planned Trajectory Correction Maneuver (TCM) with enough precision to eliminate the need for the initially planned third TCM engine firing. 🧵(20FEB2024 1600 CST) 1/3