NASA Awards Intuitive Machines for Exploration Missions to Moon's South Pole

Tuesday - October 31 2023, 02:46 UTC - 1 year ago

NASA has awarded Intuitive Machines of Houston a contract to perform science and exploration missions on the moon's south pole with two separate landers. The Nova-C IM-1 mission will place a lander on the crater rim of Malapert A and carry five NASA payloads. Meanwhile, the PRIME-1 mission will land two instruments on the moon for the first ever in-situ resource utilization demonstration. Both missions are currently scheduled for launch in November 2023.

NASA has awarded Intuitive Machines of Houston contracts for science and exploration missions to the South Pole of the moon in 2024. The commercial delivery is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative and the Artemis program.IM-1 MissionThe IM-1 mission launch is currently scheduled for a six-day period that opens November 16 on a Falcon 9 from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A .

The Intuitive Machines 1 (IM-1, TO2-IM) mission objective is to place a lander, called Nova-C, on the crater rim of Malapert A near the south pole of the Moon. The commercially built lander will carry five NASA payloads and commercial cargo. The scientific objectives of the mission include studies of plume-surface interactions, radio astronomy, and space weather interactions with the lunar surface .

It will also be demonstrating precision landing technologies and communication and navigation node capabilities. IM-1 was selected through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, in which NASA contracts with a commercial partner, in this case Intuitive Machines, that provides the launch and lander.The Nova-C Lander is a hexagonal cylinder, 4.0 meters tall and 1.57 meters wide, on 6 landing legs with a launch mass of 1908 kg .

It is capable of carrying approximately 100 kg of payload to the surface. It uses solar panels to generate 200 W of power on the surface, using a 25amp-hr battery and a 28 VDC system. Propulsion and landing use liquid methane as fuel and liquid oxygen as an oxidizer powering a 3100 N main engine mounted on the bottom of the lander. Communications are via S-band. The scientific payload includes the Laser Retro-Reflector Array (LRA), Navigation Doppler Lidar for Precise Velocity and Range Sensing (NDL), Lunar Node 1 Navigation Demonstrator (LN-1), Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS), and Radio wave Observation at the Lunar Surface of the photoElectron Sheath (ROLSES) .

In total there are five NASA and four commercial payloads planned.Launch is currently scheduled for no earlier than 15 November 2023. After launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral, the Nova-C spacecraft will go into a 185 x 60,000 km Earth orbit, followed by a translunar injection and a maneuver to put it in a 100 km lunar orbit. The lander will land on the Moon on the rim of Malapert A crater near the south pole .

The lander is capable of operating for about 14 Earth days in sunlight.IM-2 MissionNova-C IM-2 or PRIME-1 (Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1) is a NASA mission to land two instruments on the moon using Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C commercial lunar lander on the Nova-C IM-2 mission.The Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1) will be the first in-situ resource utilization demonstration on the Moon .

Additionally, for the first time, NASA will robotically sample and analyze for ice from below the surface. The landing site will be near the lunar South Pole on a ridge not far from Shackleton craterThe data from PRIME-1 will help scientists understand in-situ resources on the Moon, including resource location mapping. PRIME-1 contrives instruments to acquire radar data to measure subsurface composition under the declines slope-shades of craters on the Moon’s polar regions, where ice is suspected to exist .