Odysseus from Intuitive Machines has started heading towards the moon and could go down in history as first privately built lander land on the lunar surface. The lander was carried to space by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket using a booster that had already completed 17 flights before this one and could even fly again in the future, given that it was safely returned to Earth in Enterprise Landing Zone 1. SpaceX and Intuitive Machines have confirmed that Odysseus has successfully deployed and begun its multi-day journey to the Moon.
To be exact, Intuitive Machines has set its sights on the Malapert A crater, near the Moon's south pole, as the landing site for Ulysses. The spacecraft can operate for about 14 Earth days when powered by sunlight, but the company hopes the landing will take place by February 22. Odysseus, the first of the Nova-C-type landers that Intuitive Machines plans to launch this year, carries five NASA payloads in addition to commercial cargo.
Mission objectives include demonstrating a precision landing and testing some capabilities of the communications and navigation nodes. It will also observe how rocket plumes and space weather interact with the lunar surface. IM-1 was one of the missions that NASA had chosen to take its scientific instruments to the Moon over the next few years as part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. THE first of the CLPS missions take off was Astrobotic's Peregrine 1 mission, which unfortunately experienced a anomaly this prevented the lander from pointing its solar panels toward the sun and caused a propellant leak. Peregrine never went to the moon and completed his journey in burn into the Earth's atmosphere upon re-entry.