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      That moment when you land on the Moon, break a leg, and are about to topple over

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 28 February - 22:48

    A photo of <em>Odysseus</em> the moment before it gently toppled over.

    Enlarge / A photo of Odysseus the moment before it gently toppled over. (credit: Intuitive Machines)

    After six days and the public release of new images, engineers have finally pieced together the moments before, during, and after the Odysseus lander touched down on the Moon.

    During a news conference on Wednesday, the chief executive of Intuitive Machines, Steve Altemus, described what his company has learned about what happened last Thursday evening as Odysseus made its powered descent down to the Moon.

    From their control room in Houston, the mission operators watched with fraying nerves, as their range finders had failed. A last-minute effort to use altitude data from a NASA payload on board failed because the flight computer on board Odysseus could not ingest it in time. So the lander was, in essence, coming down to the Moon without any real-time altimetry data .

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      A little US company makes history by landing on the Moon

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 23 February - 01:23

    Odysseus passes over the near side of the Moon following lunar orbit insertion on February 21.

    Enlarge / Odysseus passes over the near side of the Moon following lunar orbit insertion on February 21. (credit: Intuitive Machines)

    For the first time in more than half a century, a US-built spacecraft has made a soft landing on the Moon.

    There was high drama and plenty of intrigue on Thursday evening as Intuitive Machines attempted to land its Odysseus spacecraft in a small crater not all that far from the south pole of the Moon. About 20 minutes after touchdown, NASA declared success, but some questions remained about the health of the lander and its orientation. Why? Because while Odysseus was phoning home, its signal was weak.

    But after what the spacecraft and its developer, Houston-based Intuitive Machines, went through earlier on Thursday, it was a miracle that Odysseus made it at all.

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      Fueling a spacecraft while it’s on a rocket? “Not trivial,” SpaceX official says.

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 14 February - 15:41

    A Falcon 9 rocket is seen with a Nova C lander tucked in its payload fairing.

    Enlarge / A Falcon 9 rocket is seen with a Nova C lander tucked in its payload fairing. (credit: SpaceX)

    Are you ready for round two of the lunar lottery?

    As early as Thursday morning, a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a privately developed lunar lander may launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The vehicle, built by a Houston-based company called Intuitive Machines, will be the second US-made lunar lander to launch from Florida in a little more than a month.

    The renaissance in American lunar landers represents the vanguard of NASA's program to return humans to the Moon and establish a more permanent presence. (No US-built vehicle has made a soft landing on the Moon in more than half a century.) Part of that is finding lower-cost transportation services, which is what these privately built lunar landers are all about.

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      It’s crunch time for companies building NASA’s commercial lunar landers

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 4 October - 00:21 · 1 minute

    Astrobotic's first lunar lander, named Peregrine, is complete and ready for shipment to the launch site at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

    Enlarge / Astrobotic's first lunar lander, named Peregrine, is complete and ready for shipment to the launch site at Cape Canaveral, Florida. (credit: Astrobotic )

    Within a few months, NASA may celebrate the first successful landing of an American spacecraft on the Moon in more than 50 years. This would be an immense confidence boost for commercial startups with an eye on the nascent market for lunar missions. It would also signal to NASA that it can rely on commercial companies for foundational elements of the agency's Artemis program to return humans to the Moon.

    Realistically, there's also a chance that the first two commercial robotic lunar landing missions may miss the mark. One or both could crash on the lunar surface or otherwise falter along the journey from the Earth to the Moon. This wouldn't be a disaster. NASA officials have smartly set low expectations for these early commercial lunar missions, but these first landers are several years late, and a series of failures would inevitably raise questions about the program's future.

    Five years after NASA started the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program , two companies finally have lunar landers ready for final launch preparations. Astrobotic's robotic Moon lander, Peregrine, has been in storage since March at the company's headquarters in Pittsburgh. This week, Intuitive Machines showed off its completed Nova-C lander to Ars in Houston.

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      Intuitive Machines says it is ready to fly to the Moon

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 15 August, 2023 - 15:31

    An artist's rendering of the Nova-C spacecraft on the lunar surface.

    Enlarge / An artist's rendering of the Nova-C spacecraft on the lunar surface. (credit: Intuitive Machines)

    A Houston-based company that is one of several US firms building private lunar landers, Intuitive Machines, says its three-meter-tall Nova-C lander is finally ready to take to the skies.

    "Our Nova-C lander is completely built," said Steve Altemus, cofounder and chief executive of Intuitive Machines, in an earnings call on Monday. "We will deliver a lunar lander ready to go in September."

    Intuitive Machines is competing with other US companies, including Astrobotic and Firefly, for NASA-funded missions to deliver science experiments and other payloads to the surface of the Moon. Intuitive Machines and Astrobotic were formally awarded the first of these "Commercial Lunar Payload Services" contracts in May 2019. Each of the companies is running a couple of years behind schedule in producing their landers, however.

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      In a bid to expand its Moon business, Intuitive Machines will go public

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 16 September, 2022 - 12:17

    A rendering of Intuitive Machines' Nova-C lander on the surface of the Moon.

    Enlarge / A rendering of Intuitive Machines' Nova-C lander on the surface of the Moon. (credit: Intuitive Machines)

    A company building spacecraft to land on the Moon announced Friday that it will go public as it seeks to expand the services it provides in the lunar environment.

    Intuitive Machines, based in Houston, said it will combine with a special purpose acquisition company named Inflection Point Acquisition Corp. The transaction will close in about four months, with the new company named Intuitive Machines and trading on the NASDAQ exchange under the symbol LUNR.

    Steve Altemus, co-founder, president, and CEO of Intuitive Machines, said going public would raise between $100 million and $400 million in new capital for the company, which would have an equity value of about $1 billion.

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