A US spacecraft that left the shores of America in Feb. 15 to the moon has successfully landed on Thursday Feb.22 as predicted by intuitive machines.
The Spacecraft which carried a robotic lander named Odysseus made its first successful landing on the moon since over half a century ago, the closing chapter in humanity’s astonishing achievement of sending people to the moon and bringing them all back alive.
The lander which was a bit bigger than a telephone booth arrived in the south polar region of the moon at 6:23 pm. Eastern time on Thursday.
The news came after Tim Crain, the chief technology officer of Intuitive Machines, the Houston-based company that built Odysseus, reported that a faint signal from the spacecraft had been detected.
“It’s faint, but it’s there,” he said. “So stand by, folks. We’ll see what’s happening here.”
After a short while, he announced, “What we can confirm, without a doubt, is our equipment is on the surface of the moon and we are transmitting. So congratulations.”
Later, He added “Houston, Odysseus has found its new home.” This spurred jubilation among the people in the control center already. But for the fact that the ability for the spacecraft to communicate properly was vague. The clapping and shouting was muted until there was communication between the spacecraft and the control center was clear and they could confirm a safe landing.
Later in the evening, however, the company gave a better news,
“After troubleshooting communications, flight controllers have confirmed Odysseus is upright and starting to send data,” Intuitive Machines said in a statement. “Right now, we are working to downlink the first images from the lunar surface.”
Why go to the moon?
NASA feels more comfortable with this recent mission of going to the moon because unlike the previous Apollo missions that led to astronauts walking in the moon, it has a more revolutionary mission to help inaugurate a more revolutionary era such as transportation around the solar system that is economical as far as spaceflight is concerned.
This is considered a big feat for the American government to have repeated a successful trip to the moon after the Apollo missions so many decades ago.
For more information on the Spacecraft, lander and the entire mission, read here
