The intuitive machines landed a robot on the moon last year. Can Houston do it again, but keep the spacecraft in a straight position this time?
When the spacecraft, named Odysseus, is launched on the moon last February, I managed to do so Communicate with the Earth Although he has been dropped Besides. The first landing was running commercially to reach the surface of the moon, and the first American vehicle quietly landing on the moon since APollo 17 in 1972.
The second lands of the company, called ATHENA, are now on the Launchpad platform. Here is what you need to know about the Wednesday trip.
When is the launch, and how can I see it?
Athens and three other spacecraft will launch a Spacex Falcon 9 missile from the Kennedy Space Center in NASA in Florida. It is scheduled to be launched at 7:16 pm East on February 26. There is an opportunity greater than 95 percent of favorable weather.
If the weather or technical problems arise, the chances of backup will be available during a four -day launch window. After that, the task should be delayed for a month.
NASA will provide launch coverage from about 45 minutes before taking off.
Where do Athens go?
If the launch occurs on Wednesday, the spacecraft of the intuitive machines will try to land on March 6 in Mons Mouton, an area about 100 miles from the southern pole of the moon. This will be closer to the Antarctic than any previous lunar land.
What do you carry Athens?
The main load is NASA training as part of the lunar lunar load services program. Paying a commercial company like intuitive machines to take something to the moon is cheaper than obtaining NASA and building its own spacecraft.
The drilling is designed to dig the soil up to about three feet below the surface. Lunar soil will extract about four inches at a time. You will smell the mass ripper known as the mass rip Frozen Which easily turns into gases.
Athena Lander also holds three robot robots and a small “Qadoub” flies that will be published after the landing.
The largest Rover, known as the independent mobile phone excavation platform, or MAPP, is part of the NASA financing test for the first mobile network on the moon. Nokia won funding from the Space Agency for Technology Test, but then needed a way to move at least one antenna from the landing. So Nokia rented a company called Lunar Outpost to build Rover, which is a small dog size.
The lunar settlement focus sold an area on MAPP to other customers. The first, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, built a small Rover called ASTROANT, which will crawl around the upper flat surface of the MAPP.
Athens will also publish Rover called Yaoki, which was built by a Japanese company, Dymon, slightly larger than Mac Mini computer.
Al -Qados intuitive machines were built as part of another NASA contract. The small craft that works the missile can provide new opportunities to explore long distances, similar to the road NASA ingenuity helicopter on Mars It has provided a different way to explore easily on the ground.
On the moon is unabated, the helicopter can not fly, but the defenses will allow the flying to fly for long distances. It will also carry one of the Nokia mobile antennas. The plan is to fly to one of the permanently shaded pits.
Eclipse?!
The task is scheduled to continue on the surface for less than one day, or about 10 days of ground, until the sun sets. With no solar energy, the spacecraft batteries will run.
But in the middle of the moon’s day, on March 14 at about two in the morning, East time, darkness will fall for a few minutes – eclipse when the Earth passes between the sun and the moon.
Solar -powered Lander will have to extract energy from its batteries during the eclipse, but it must remain alive.
Why do I offer the last intuitive machines hotel?
Odysseus Lander was supposed to use the Laser height scale to help direct it to the moon. But due to supervision during preparations for launch, the safety key for the device has never been disabled, making this useless tool. Engineers in the intuitive machines have rewritten their intended programs in a hurry to use similar measurements from a Test NASA tool on the spacecraft. But they have missed updating one key teacher in the computer code, and ignoring the data landing program.
Thus, the spacecraft fell neglecting its precise heightJust guess the distance over the surface based on the calculated horizontal speed from the camera’s images and acceleration measurements at the speed of the spacecraft. The guesses were close enough that they did not collide, although they were still moving horizontally. The landing equipment erupted, and the spacecraft tends.
Athena Lander is almost identical to Odysseus-All the company calls NOVA-C- Intuitive machine officials said they had tested the laser several times.
What other spacecraft are traveling with Athens?
Three separate spacecraft is launched on the Falcon 9 missile. They mainly benefit from the additional load space in the missile for a cheaper ride to space.
One, Lunar Trailblazer, is the lost cost NASA mission – about $ 100 million – is designed to measure the distribution of water on the moon from orbit.
While Athens will make a one -week fast trip to the moon, Lunar Trailblazer will take a more timeless and fuel path. If the launch occurs on Wednesday, it will take more than four months to reach the moon. (If the launch occurs on a different day, the path changes, and the journey may reach seven months.)
A second spacecraft, Odin, it is a microwave spacecraft built by Astroforge From California. He will go to a asteroid close to Earth to study whether it may be full of valuable minerals that can be extracted in the future.
Third car, Illusion Geo 1It is a spacecraft from Epic From San Francisco designed to put it Small satellites in distant orbits.
What lands on the moon soon?
Athena is the third commercial weapon that was launched towards the moon this year, although it may be the second arrival.
On January 15, The Falcon 9 missile was launched by Landers – Blue Ghost of Firefly Aerospace of Austin, Texas, and ISPace of Japan.
Blue Ghost, like ATHENA, is part of the NASA CLPS program, and is scheduled to walk on March 2, before Athens. It is heading towards Mare Crisium, a basin in the northeastern quarter of the nearby side.
Flexibility, also known as Hakuto-R Mission 2 Lander, takes an indirect path and is expected to reach the moon in May. The landing site is located near the Mare Frigoris Center, or the cold sea in the northern hemisphere of the moon. This will be an ISPace’s second lunar landing. Its first mission, in 2023, was crashed.
