Shortly after midnight this Wednesday, the next NASA CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) lunar lander is set to begin its trip to the moon’s surface aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9. Launch time is scheduled for 12:57 AM EST, from Pad LC-39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

The lander was built by Intuitive Machines, a Houston-based company, and is named “Odysseus.” The mission designation is IM-1. Assuming a successful flight to orbit and post-launch vehicle checkouts, IM-1 will undertake a nine-day trip to the moon, where it will then attempt to be the first successful American soft-landing on the lunar surface since Apollo 17 in 1972.

As part of Project Artemis, in May 2019, the agency awarded a task order for scientific payload delivery to Intuitive Machines to build and fly Odysseus and IM-1. The spacecraft will “Demonstrate autonomous navigation,” according to a press release from NASA.

The landing site selected for this mission is Malapert A, a satellite crater to Malapert, a 69 km crater in the Moon’s south pole region. Named after Charles Malapert, a 17th-century Belgian astronomer, the area around the landing site is believed to be made of lunar highland material, similar to Apollo 16’s landing site in the in the Descartes Highlands.

Experiments Aboard

• ILO-X International Lunar Observatory Instrument
• Laser Retro-Reflector Array, a NASA Instrument to reflect light.
• Navigation Doppler Lidar for Precise Velocity and Range Sensing, a NASA Instrument
• Lunar Node 1 Navigation Demonstrator NASA Instrument
• Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies NASA Instrument
• Radiowave Observations at the Lunar Surface (ROLSES), a NASA / University of Colorado Boulder Instrument
• Tiger Eye 1, a Louisiana State University Instrument
• EagleCAM Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University CubeSat
• Lunaprise Galactic Legacy Labs Memorial
• Moon Phases Pace Verso / 4Space / NFMoon Sculpture

NASA said that “the Lunar Node-1 experiment, or LN-1, is a radio beacon designed to support precise geolocation and navigation observations for landers, surface infrastructure, and astronauts, digitally confirming their positions on the Moon relative to other craft, ground stations, or rovers on the move. These radio beacons also can be used in space to help with orbital maneuvers and with guiding landers to a successful touchdown on the lunar surface.”

Odysseus will then have seven days to complete experiments on the lunar surface before the lunar night sets on the south pole of the Moon, rendering the spacecraft inoperable.

Utility of Lunar Node-1

“Imagine getting verification from a lighthouse on the shore you’re approaching, rather than waiting on word from the home port you left days earlier,” said Evan Anzalone, principal investigator of LN-1 and a navigation systems engineer at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “What we seek to deliver is a lunar network of lighthouses, offering sustainable, localized navigation assets that enable lunar craft and ground crews to quickly and accurately confirm their position instead of relying on Earth.”

Intuitive Machines Leadership

Intuitive Machines was founded by CEO Steve Altemus in 2013, along with CTO Tim Crain, Stephen Altemus, and Kam Ghaffarian (a cofounder of Axiom Space) and is a publicly traded company.

Altemus is a graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach and holds an M.S. in Engineering Management from the University of Central Florida. He is also a former Shuttle program employee working in operations, launch, and landing activities prior to leaving to Johnson Space Flight Center in Houston where he served as a Deputy Director of Engineering.

Ghaffarian holds a B.S. degree in Computer Science and Electronics Engineering, an M.Sc. in Information Management, and a PhD in Management Information Systems. He has worked for Lockheed Martin on various NASA contracts, Loral Space, and as an entrepreneur, Ghaffarian co-founded Axiom Space, IBX, X-energy, and Quantum Space in addition to Intuitive Machines. He is also a philanthropist promoting STEM education.

Crain holds a Bachelor’s, M.S. and Ph.D. in Aerospace engineering, and like Altemus is a NASA employee where he worked as an aerospace engineer, a strategic advisor and as the Guidance, Navigation and Control Lead for the Morpheus Vertical Test Bed, a prototype planetary lander capable of vertical takeoff and landing.