Latest news with #PhilMetzger
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Intuitive Machines is hoping for a moon-landing streak this week
A Houston-based space company just released a tantalizing sneak preview — an image sequence of its robotic spacecraft flying over the moon's south pole, near its planned landing site. The destination is Mons Mouton, one of NASA's potential landing locations for its Artemis astronauts. Intuitive Machines' Athena moon lander began circling the moon on March 3, just one day after a competitor, Firefly Aerospace, landed on the lunar surface without a hitch. This marks Intuitive Machines' second journey to the moon, following its success last year in becoming the first business — rather than a government space program — to touch down on the surface without crashing so badly it ended the mission. But telling the flight controllers to "break a leg" might not be the good-luck wish they want to hear ahead of Athena's descent: Even though its uncrewed Odysseus lander was able to send back some data in 2024, it damaged one of its struts and ended up on its side. The latest mission, referred to as IM-2 or PRIME-1, is slated for a moon landing at 11:32 a.m. CT on March 6. Intuitive Machines and NASA will provide live event coverage, starting at 10:30 a.m. CT. SEE ALSO: A company is returning to the moon. Here's how it will avoid tipping again In the video above, the Athena lander can be seen flying over the lunar south pole near its intended landing site. If it succeeds in getting to the surface, the company's mission will be among the first onsite demonstrations of resource detection on the moon. A drill and mass spectrometer, a device that identifies the kinds of elements or particles in a substance, will measure the potential presence of gasses in the lunar soil. A Laser Retroreflector Array on the top deck of the lander also will bounce laser light back at any orbiting or incoming spacecraft to give future missions a permanent reference point on the moon. Other instruments will test a surface communications system and deploy a drone that can hop along the lunar surface. Athena is the second Commercial Lunar Payload Services-supported lander of the year. The NASA program has invested $2.6 billion in contracts with private-sector vendors to help deliver instruments to the moon and send back crucial data. Athena flies over the mid-latitudes of the moon in the above image sequence. But landing on the moon remains onerous. The moon's exosphere provides virtually no drag to slow a spacecraft down as it approaches the ground. Furthermore, there are no GPS systems on the moon to help guide a craft to its landing spot. A combination of gravity and inertia factors seemed to stymie Intuitive Machines' previous landing. Everything on the moon is "six times tippier," said Phil Metzger, a planetary scientist at the University of Florida, then in a post on X. The Japanese moon lander SLIM, short for Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon, experienced a similar outcome. "Why did we end up at a 30 degree angle? We know exactly why we did," Trent Martin, senior vice president of Intuitive Machines' space systems, told reporters during a news conference. "There was an issue with the laser altimeter that we used during the final operation just before landing that would have told us exactly how close we were to the surface." When Intuitive Machines' Odysseus lander touched down on the moon in 2024, landing gear had broken off from one of the robotic spacecraft's six struts. Credit: Intuitive Machines Instead of using the laser altimeter, flight controllers actually were using the camera systems on board the spacecraft, which were less accurate, ultimately resulting in a harder landing than planned. Martin said an investigation into the spacecraft data resulted in 85 upgrades, including contingencies that should allow Athena to land up to 10 degrees off in any direction — perhaps more — and still complete the mission objectives. Meanwhile, NASA is trying to troubleshoot problems with another spacecraft that shared a rocket with Athena. Engineers were able to establish communication with NASA's Lunar Trailblazer in space the day of its launch, only to lose it the next morning, Feb. 27. NASA said the team is working with ground stations to reestablish telemetry and assess power system issues to try to fix it. The space agency hasn't since provided an update on the spacecraft.
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Intuitive Machines Aims for Moon Landing on Thursday: How to Watch
Commercial moon missions with NASA connections are all the rage right now. Firefly Aerospace stuck the lunar landing of its Blue Ghost mission on March 2. Intuitive Machines will try for a similar success with its IM-2 mission on Thursday. It should be a thrilling ride, and you can follow along live. Intuitive Machines' Nova-C lunar lander, nicknamed Athena, carries a suite of science instruments and robots, including a hopping drone, multiple small rovers and a NASA drill designed to burrow 3 feet under the surface. The lander's cargo includes both NASA and commercial payloads. The mission is part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, an effort by the space agency to use private companies to send landers and rovers to the moon. NASA's grander goals through its Artemis moon program are to return astronauts to the lunar surface and establish a long-term human presence there. IM-2 is in service of that vision. "The lander is carrying NASA technology that will measure the potential presence of resources from lunar soil that could be extracted and used by future explorers to produce fuel or breathable oxygen," the space agency said in an update on Tuesday. Athena's travels began on Feb. 26 with a launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida. Intuitive Machines targets the mission's landing for 9:32 a.m. PT on Thursday. The landing site is near the moon's south pole, a prime NASA target region for future human exploration. The timing was partly dictated by the availability of sunlight on the moon's surface. The Athena lander uses solar power. Intuitive Machines expects the lander to operate for about 10 days. NASA's live landing coverage will be broadcast on its free NASA Plus streaming service starting at 8:30 a.m. PT, about an hour before touchdown. NASA Plus is available through the website or the NASA app. The broadcast will also be on YouTube. A post-landing news conference is scheduled for 1 p.m. PT. There's another way to engage with the landing and mission festivities. Comcast's Xfinity service and MIT Media Lab have teamed up for real-time coverage. MIT is involved with the IM-2 mission's Lunar Outpost Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform rover. MAPP is designed to navigate rugged terrain using sensors and visual cues. MIT's To the Moon to Stay program features educational resources and will deliver a livestream of the landing along with other key events from the mission. Watch for a later live feed involving the MAPP rover and photos and videos from the lunar surface. Xfinity X1 customers can access the mission resources and livestreams by saying "to the moon" to their voice remotes. Crewed space missions tend to attract a lot of attention. IM-2 may not have humans on board, but it's worth following along for the fascinating science. Planetary scientist Phil Metzger, a research professor at the University of Central Florida, highlights the mission's Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment 1. PRIME-1 aims to measure the ice in the moon's soil, and that's a big deal. "That ice contains a record of the history of the inner solar system and may help us understand how water and carbon were delivered to the Earth-Moon system billions of years ago, turning the Earth into a habitable planet," Metzger tells CNET. "This is crucial for understanding how many other planets might be capable of supporting life in the galaxy, so it helps answer the question, 'Are we alone in the cosmos?'" You can't get more profound than that. NASA hopes PRIME-1 will help researchers understand water availability. Water is heavy and expensive to transport through space, so future human expeditions will want to use what's already on the moon. Many missions have tried and failed to land successfully on the moon. Russia's Luna-25 mission crashed into the moon in 2023. Israel's Beresheet mission and India's Chandrayaan-2 Vikram lander both crashed in 2019. "Lunar landers are challenging, not just because the lunar environment is so harsh and exotic, but because we fly so few of them," Metzger says, noting failures are a part of learning how to make moon landings reliable. It's much harder to touch down on the moon than on Earth. "The moon has a large enough gravity to make it challenging to land softly, but no atmosphere to help slow down a lander," says Josh Colwell, associate dean of the College of Sciences at the University of Central Florida. "The surface is very rough at all spatial scales, so the tipping over of a lander is a real risk." It's not just about having good landing hardware. The software and systems on board must analyze the surface to help guide the lander to a safe spot. Lunar landings are thrilling, in part because of the dangers the machines must navigate to ensure a safe touchdown. You might be wondering what happened to the IM-1 mission. Intuitive Machines delivered its Odysseus lander to the moon in 2024, but not everything went right. The lander made it to the surface but ended up sideways, putting a damper on its science work. The company is rooting for a gentle, upright landing for IM-2.
Yahoo
04-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Watch: Firefly Aerospace's historic landing of Blue Ghost on the moon
Firefly Aerospace released video Tuesday showing the historic touchdown of its Blue Ghost lunar lander. The Cedar Park, Texas-based commercial company was making its first trip to the moon with help from NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. While fellow Texas company Intuitive Machines managed a soft landing in 2024 under the program, that company's lander named Odysseus tipped to one side, and NASA was not able to glean as much from its on-board experiments as it could have had the lander stayed upright. Blue Ghost did just that, nailing the landing early Sunday to begin a 14-day mission with 10 NASA payloads on board that will remain active during the lunar day. The released video shows the spacecraft as it maneuvered away from surface hazards that were identified during its descent from lunar orbit. The company stated the lander touched down within the planned target radius located in Mare Crisium, which is in the northeast quadrant of the face of the moon as seen from the northern hemisphere. The video excited UCF professor Phil Metzger, who is most interested in how lunar dust interacts as the spacecraft landed. 'This is superb! Will be a treasure for quantifying plume-surface interactions during lunar landing.' he posted on X. 'There are some things I don't understand yet and will take a while to unpack.' Among the NASA payloads are some that look to get more information on lunar dust, including the Electrodynamic Dust Shield developed by a team at Kennedy Space Center. Another called Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies looks to see what sort of dust plume is kicked up by landers. And a third is called the Lunar PlanetVac that will sample lunar regolith. 'Blue Ghost has been busy since parking on the Moon!' the company posted on X on Tuesday afternoon. 'Just in the last two days, the data we've downlinked jumped from 27 GB to 57 GB as we continue NASA payload operations.' One other payload already has a win for NASA and its partnership with the Italian Space Agency. That happened Monday when the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment successfully captured Earth-based navigation signals from U.S. GPS and Europe's Galileo systems, both versions of the Global Navigation Satellite System. Kevin Coggins, deputy associate administrator for NASA's Space Communications and Navigation Program said the signals bodes well for the Artemis program's moon and Mars aspirations. 'This is a very exciting discovery for lunar navigation,' he said. 'We hope to leverage this capability for future missions.' The Firefly mission marks the most active to date under NASA's CLPS program. The first mission by Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology in January 2024 suffered a propulsion issue after launch and never made it to the moon. Intuitive Machines flew the second mission launching in February 2024, but several of the payloads were not able to operate after its tilted touchdown. Firefly launched in January this year taking its time to get to the moon and then make the final approach. A fourth mission, and second from Intuitive Machines, which launched from Kennedy Space Center last week, is taking a more direct path. It's slated to attempt a landing as soon as 12:32 p.m. Thursday, and one targeting the moon's south pole for the first time. The same Nova-C lander design as used on the first mission — this one named Athena — is headed for Mons Mouton, bringing with it a NASA drill that will hunt for ice and other volatile substances while also hoping to deploy a small rover and a hopper that will propel itself into a crater. Other CLPS missions that could fly this year include a third Intuitive Machines flight, a second from Astrobotic and the first from Blue Origin.
