Today, at 09:05 Moscow time, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was successfully launched from the LC-39A site of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. On board was the Nova-C lunar lander, nicknamed “Odyssey”. The module was created by a private company from Houston called Intuitive Machines. The moon landing is planned to take place on February 22. If successful, it will be the first time an American spacecraft will land on a satellite in 52 years.

The rocket with the Nova-C module was supposed to take off about a day ago. But the launch was canceled due to the impossibility of pumping methane fuel into the tanks of the module (its engines run on a mixture of methane and oxygen). It turned out that the temperature of the methane fuel was not suitable and the procedure was interrupted. The launch took place today at 01:05 local time or 09:05 Moscow time. According to preliminary data, the launch was successful.

On the way to the Moon, the module must perform three orbit correction maneuvers. Landing on the surface of the satellite is planned to take place on February 22 in the 24 km Malapert A crater. If completed, the mission will be the southernmost spacecraft in the history of human exploration of the Moon. The landing site is approximately 300 km from the satellite’s south pole. It will officially become the South Pole, according to NASA. The closest Indian lunar rover to the pole was 600 km away from the pole, which landed during the Chandrayaan-3 mission in August 2023.

The next landing of a human on the moon within the scope of the Artemis lunar program is expected to take place in the same region. Thus, the Nova-C module will be considered a real tracker.

The company Intuitive Machines hopes to be the first private company in the world to land its module on the lunar surface. So far, only modules produced under government programs have landed on the Moon. Still fresh are the memories of last month’s failure of the American company Astrobotic Technology, whose lunar module was forced to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere due to a malfunction in its engines. NASA does not attract private individuals because of the good life, although the wider involvement of private companies is fresh blood and new ideas. Space requires more and more money, and it makes sense to share this burden with business.

The cost of the contract for the development of the Nova-C lunar module has increased to $100 million since 2019. The weight of the module, which is a structure with a height of 4.3 m and a diameter of 1.6 m, reaches 675 kg. The mass of the load is 130 kg. The rocket engine developed for the module can enable it to fly to another location after landing.

There are 6 NASA devices on the module. It consists of an array of laser retroreflectors, a demonstration radio navigation beacon LN-1, a Doppler leader, a SCALPSS stereo camera for measuring the radio frequency mass of fuel remaining in tanks and a ROLSES low-frequency receiver. The stereo camera will study the dynamics of dust lifted by the module, and ROLSES will help investigate the payload of dust and plasma near the lunar surface.

The module will also include several special payloads. This includes a detachable Eaglecam camera that will be lowered to 30 m to film the docking process, two ILO-X cameras for the International Lunar Observatory, Lonestar’s DRaaS experiment to transfer data from the Earth to the Moon for storage and retrieval, a sculptural composition . Phases of the Moon and Columbia’s heat-resistant material to protect cryogenic tanks

If the Intuitive Machines’ first mission to the Moon is successful, two more modules will be launched. The company also plans to create a navigation and information cluster of satellites in lunar orbit and implement a number of other lunar projects.