Picture Credit: Wikipedia
USA has re-kindled its romance with moon by successfully landing their robotic moon lander Odyssey on south pole of moon, at about 6:23 p.m. EST (2323 GMT). Named after the hero of Homer’s epic poem the Odyssey, Odysseus, soft-landed on south pole of moon amid anxious moments. Odysseus is also known as Nova-C lander.
Texas based company Intuitive machines had built the spacecraft and created history as the first private organisation achieving a monumental feat of this stature.
“What a triumph! Odysseus has taken the moon. This feat is a giant leap forward for all of humanity”– Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator.
NASA is bolstered with this success by a privately manufactured & operated spacecraft and strengthens its ambition of sending commercial spacecrafts to moon before re-sending astronauts to moon.
According to Intuitive & NASA commentators during live broadcast, there was an initial delay in receiving signal from the 6-legged lander accompanied by an expected radio blackout. Subsequently a faint signal was received from the craft confirming it had landed on the south pole. Weak strength signal from Odyssey is probably due to awkward orientation of the lander or some kind of obstruction to the antenna. However, afterwards, M/S Intuitive Machines confirmed in social media that the spacecraft is correctly oriented and is sending data. Later, again, IM has informed that the spacecraft may be positioned in a little side wise inclination.
Former NASA Science Chief Thomas Zurbuchen stated, “landing is a major intermediate goal, but the goal of the mission is to do science and get the pictures back and so forth.”
NASA had stopped its romantic spree with the moon back in 1972 when 2 of its astronauts (Gene Cernan & Harrison Schmitt landed on moon for the last time in Apollo-17.
Odyssey embarked on its moon journey last Thursday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center; Florida on Falcon 9 rocket launched by Spacex.
The spacecraft carried a multitude of scientific instruments to undertake planned scientific investigations on the moon for a period of 7 days, i.e. before sun sets on the polar landing region. The project expenditure is approximately 118 million USD.
The landing location of Odyssey is situated close to where ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation)’s Chandrayaan-3 landed. Of course, a friendly greeting to each other!