A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on February 15, 2024. The mission’s goal is to deliver science payloads to the surface of the moon
| Photo Credit: AP

A moon lander built by Houston-based aerospace company Intuitive Machines was launched from Florida early on Thursday on a mission to conduct the first U.S. lunar touchdown in more than a half century and the first by a privately owned spacecraft.

The company’s Nova-C lander, dubbed Odysseus, lifted off shortly after 1 a.m. EST (0600 GMT) atop a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket flown by Elon Musk’ SpaceX from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.

A live NASA-SpaceX online video feed showed the two-stage, 25-story rocket roaring off the launch pad and streaking into the dark sky over Florida’s Atlantic coast, trailed by a fiery yellowish plume of exhaust.

About 48 minutes after launch, the six-legged lander was shown being released from Falcon 9’s upper stage about 139 miles above Earth and drifting away on its voyage to the moon.

“IM-1 Odysseus lunar lander separation confirmed,” a mission controller was heard saying.

Moments later, mission operations in Houston received its first radio signals from Odysseus as the lander began an automated process of powering on its systems and orienting itself in space, according to webcast commentators.

Although considered an Intuitive Machines mission, the IM-1 flight is carrying six NASA payloads of instruments designed to gather data about the lunar environment ahead of NASA’s planned return of astronauts to the moon later this decade.

Thursday’s launch came a month after the lunar lander of another private firm, Astrobotic Technology, suffered a propulsion system leak on its way to the moon shortly after being placed in orbit on January 8 by a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan rocket making its debut flight.

The failure of Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander, which was also flying NASA payloads to the moon, marked the third time a private company had been unable to achieve a “soft landing” on the lunar surface, following ill-fated efforts by companies from Israel and Japan.

Those mishaps illustrated the risks NASA faces in leaning more heavily on the commercial sector than it had in the past to realize its spaceflight goals.

Plans call for Odysseus to reach its destination after a weeklong flight, with a February 22 landing at crater Malapert A near the moon’s south pole.

First since 1972

If successful, the flight would represent the first controlled descent to the lunar surface by a U.S. spacecraft since the final Apollo crewed moon mission in 1972, and the first by a private company.

The feat also would mark the first journey to the lunar surface under NASA’s Artemis moon program, as the U.S. races to return astronauts to Earth’s natural satellite before China lands its own crewed spacecraft there.

IM-1 is the latest test of NASA’s strategy of paying for the use of spacecraft built and owned by private companies to slash the cost of the Artemis missions, envisioned as precursors to human exploration of Mars.

By contrast, during the Apollo era, NASA bought rockets and other technology from the private sector, but owned and operated them itself.

NASA announced last month that it was delaying its target date for a first crewed Artemis moon landing from 2025 to late 2026, while China has said it was aiming for 2030.

Small landers such as Nova-C are expected to get there first, carrying instruments to closely survey the lunar landscape, its resources and potential hazards. Odysseus will focus on space weather interactions with the moon’s surface, radio astronomy, precision landing technologies and navigation.

Intuitive Machine’s IM-2 mission is scheduled to land at the lunar south pole in 2024, followed by an IM-3 mission later in the year with several small rovers.

Last month, Japan became the fifth country to place a lander on the moon, with its space agency JAXA achieving an unusually precise “pinpoint” touchdown of its SLIM probe last month. Last year, India became the fourth nation to land on the moon, after Russia failed in an attempt the same month.

The United States, the former Soviet Union and China are the only other countries that have carried out successful soft lunar touchdowns. China scored a world first in 2019 by achieving the first landing on the far side of the moon.

File picture of Chandrayaan-3 Vikram lander
| Photo Credit: ISRO

ISRO on Monday said the Vikram lander of Chandrayaan-3 successfully underwent a hop test when it made the soft-landing again on the lunar surface.

On command it (Vikram lander) fired the engines, elevated itself by about 40 cm as expected and landed safely at a distance of 30 to 40 cm away, ISRO said in an update on ‘X’.

Noting that the Vikram lander exceeded its mission objectives, ISRO said the importance of the exercise was that this ‘kick-start’ enthuses future sample return and human missions.

“Vikram soft-landed on the moon, again! Vikram Lander exceeded its mission objectives. It successfully underwent a hop experiment. On command, it fired the engines, elevated itself by about 40 cm as expected and landed safely at a distance of 30-40 cm away,” ISRO said in a post.

“Importance?: This ‘kick-start’ enthuses future sample return and human missions! All systems performed nominally and are healthy. Deployed Ramp, ChaSTE and ILSA were folded back and redeployed successfully after the experiment,” the space agency added.

India scripted history by soft-landing the Vikram lander of Chandrayaan-3 on the lunar surface on August 23.

India became the fourth country to touch the lunar surface and first to ever reach the south pole of the moon.

Chandrayaan-3’s Pragyan rover roams around the ‘Shiv Shakti Point’, which is the Vikram’ lander’s touchdown spot, on the moon.
| Photo Credit: PTI

On August 23, with Chandrayaan-3’s lander module making a soft landing on the moon, India became only the fourth country after the erstwhile Soviet Union, the U.S., and China to accomplish this achievement. It is a testament to the remarkable ingenuity of Indian scientists that this feat was carried out at a relatively low cost.

Three of these four countries have been late industrialisers; with only one “developed” nation, the U.S., among them. This throws up interesting questions: what factors allow for resource-constrained economies to pull off ambitious programmes? What lessons do they hold for our ability to combat challenges? Do such programmes represent a diversion of resources and attention from the pressing needs of development?

Important factors

By some estimates, the USSR was 50%-60% the size of the U.S. economy in the 1960s, when it landed the first spacecraft, Luna 9, on the moon. According to World Bank data, when measured in purchasing power parity terms, China’s per capita income was around 22% that of the U.S. in 2013 at the time of its moon landing. In contrast, India’s per capita income in 2022 was only 10.9% that of the U.S. Clearly, a relative shortfall in resources does not always pose a constraint in achieving ambitious scientific outcomes.

One clue could perhaps lie in human resources. China, India, and the U.S. are the world’s most populous nations, and have been since the 1970s; Russia ranked in the top four in the 1970s. China, Russia, and India laid a lot of importance on science and technology in their post-war/post-colonial development trajectory. Their current successes are the results of those initial investments. China, for instance, filed the most patents in the world in 2019. The large numbers of potential scientists and engineers in these countries provide a clue to the successes of these nations in space exploration despite not being as rich as the developed world.

However, the successes of the UAE’s space programme downplay the importance of population. The UAE is richer in per capita terms than the U.S., but with a population of roughly nine million in 2023. In 2020, with the help of Japan, the UAE launched the Hope probe that entered Martian orbit in 2021, making it the fifth country after Russia, the U.S., China, and India to achieve this feat. This is a remarkable achievement considering that the UAE Space Agency was only inaugurated in 2014.

Perhaps the most important factor is the role of the state. In 2022, the head of the Emirates Mars Mission, Omran Sharif, stressed the importance of the “triple helix model”, where the government, the private sector, and academics worked together, and not in silos, to achieve objectives. An active and capable state, as opposed to an intrusive and domineering one, can help establish frameworks and procedures that overcome financial constraints and enable the harnessing of important resources like skilled workers. Though the private space industry is growing, it is still only governments that have enabled spacecrafts to land on the moon.

A question often raised is whether developing economies, with problems such as poverty, can afford the diversion of valuable resources to such ambitious programmes. One problem with such objections is that it is only directed at developing economies, as though developed nations have no internal problems to speak of. In the documentary Summer of Soul, African-American participants at a music festival in 1969, held at Harlem, New York, expressed their opposition to Neil Armstrong’s historic moon landing. They cited civic infrastructure and racism as issues requiring urgent action, and said that the space programme diverted resources and attention. Yet the Apollo missions are considered triumphs on the part of humanity.

The question of whether resources directed to space programmes are a diversion from pressing development needs, however, is a valid one. As an answer, one can uphold the importance of these programmes in material and scientific terms. The knowledge gleaned from these missions will contribute to human progress, and ISRO’s demonstration of its ability to launch satellites at relatively low costs can attract business and revenue from private players.

A true partnership

More importantly, it forces us to re-evaluate the role of the state. The multiple crises besetting the world indicate the inability of the private sector to tackle them unaided. The dichotomy between state and markets, where the state is simply a referee, is no longer valid. What is required is a true partnership between the two, with active intervention of the state in order to provide the space for ingenuity to flourish. The success of governments in landing spacecrafts on the moon indicates that states can be powerful and competent actors. In her book Mission Economy, the economist Mariana Mazzucatto studies the role of the U.S. government and NASA in coordinating the activities of different actors and organisations, private and public, in order to achieve the Apollo moon landings. Much of her work examines how the state can foster innovation and success in modern-day economies.

Explained |Why did Chandrayaan-3 land on the near side of the moon?

No doubt, social problems such as climate change and hunger are very different when compared to well-defined objectives such as landing on the moon. But our successes in space show us the road map for navigating concerns on earth. An inclusive and secular state, committed to building the capacity required to ensure genuine human development, is the need of the hour.

Rahul Menon is Associate Professor, Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, O.P. Jindal Global University

The Dark Side of the Moon, 23 August 2023: The portion of Chandrayaan-3’s landing site taken after by Vikram Lander after the successful landing.
| Photo Credit: ISRO/The Hindu

India’s space agency is attempting to land a spacecraft on the moon’s south pole, a mission that could advance India’s space ambitions and expand knowledge of lunar water ice, potentially one of the moon’s most valuable resources.

Here’s what’s known about the presence of frozen water on the moon – and why space agencies and private companies see it as a key to a moon colony, lunar mining and potential missions to Mars.

How did scientists find water on the moon?

As early as the 1960s, before the first Apollo landing, scientists had speculated that water could exist on the moon. Samples the Apollo crews returned for analysis in the late 1960s and early 1970s appeared to be dry.

In 2008, Brown University researchers revisited those lunar samples with new technology and found hydrogen inside tiny beads of volcanic glass. In 2009, a NASA instrument aboard the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Chandrayaan-1 probe detected water on the moon’s surface.

Also Read | With moon now in India’s orbit, focus shifts to Pragyan rover

In the same year, another NASA probe that hit the south pole found water ice below the moon’s surface. An earlier NASA mission, the 1998 Lunar Prospector, had found evidence that the highest concentration of water ice was in the south pole’s shadowed craters.

Why is water on the moon important?

Scientists are interested in pockets of ancient water ice because they could provide a record of lunar volcanoes, material that comets and asteroids delivered to Earth, and the origin of oceans.

If water ice exists in sufficient quantities, it could be a source of drinking water for moon exploration and could help cool equipment.

It could also be broken down to produce hydrogen for fuel and oxygen to breathe, supporting missions to Mars or lunar mining.

Also Read | Not just sons of Tamil Nadu but State’s soil itself contributed to Moon mission

The 1967 United Nations Outer Space Treaty prohibits any nation from claiming ownership of the moon. There is no provision that would stop commercial operations.

A U.S.-led effort to establish a set of principles for moon exploration and the use of its resources, the Artemis Accords, has 27 signatories. China and Russia have not signed.

What makes the south pole especially tricky?

Attempted landings on the moon have failed before. Russia’s Luna-25 craft had been scheduled to land on the South Pole this week but spun out of control on approach and crashed on Sunday. The south pole – far from the equatorial region targeted by previous missions, including the crewed Apollo landings – is full of craters and deep trenches.

ISRO’s Chandrayaan-3 mission is on track for an attempted landing on Wednesday, the space agency has said. A previous Indian mission failed in 2019 to safely land near the area targeted by Chandrayaan-3.

Both the United States and China have planned missions to the south pole.

An illustration showing the soft-landing of Chandrayaan-3 on the surface of the Moon. The spacecraft is set to land on August 23, 2023 around 6.04 p.m. IST.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has been able to successfully establish a two way communication between Chandrayaan-3’s Lander Module and its predecessor Chandrayaan-2’s orbiter.  

“‘Welcome, buddy!’ Ch-2 orbiter formally welcomed Ch-3 LM. Two-way communication between the two is established. MOX has now more routes to reach the LM,” the space agency posted on X (formerly Twitter).

Also read: Chandrayaan-3 | How NASA, ESA will support ISRO during the Moon landing on August 23

The Chandrayaan-2 mission launched on July 22, 2019 consisted of an Orbiter, Lander and Rover to explore the unexplored south pole of the Moon.

The Orbiter, which has been placed in its intended orbit around the Moon, objective is to enrich understanding of the moon’s evolution and mapping of the minerals and water molecules in the Polar Regions, using its eight state-of-the-art scientific instruments.

According to ISRO the Orbiter is healthy and all the payloads are operational.

The Orbiter payloads include : Terrain Mapping Camera – 2, Chandrayaan 2 Large Area Soft X-ray Spectrometer (CLASS), Solar X-Ray Monitor, Imaging IR Spectrometer, Dual Frequency Synthetic Aperture Radar, Chandra’s Atmospheric Composition Explorer – 2, Orbiter High Resolution Camera and Dual Frequency Radio Science Experiment.

“The Orbiter camera is the highest resolution camera (0.3m) in any lunar mission so far and shall provide high resolution images which will be immensely useful to the global scientific community. The precise launch and mission management has ensured a long life of almost 7 years instead of the planned one year,” states the Chandrayan-2 mission profile.

Watch | Data Point: How tough is it to land Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander on the moon?

Chandrayaan-3 is expected to land on the moon on August 23. But space is hard. Data shows that moon missions are especially hard.

After Chandrayaan-2’s failure, The Hindu looked at how successful past moon missions have been, to assess the odds stacked against Chandrayaan-3.

Also read:  Chandrayaan-3 | How NASA, ESA will support ISRO during the Moon landing on August 23 

Presentation and production: Sonikka Loganathan

Guest: Vasudevan Mukunth

Data support: Vignesh Radhakrishnan and Krithika Ganapathy