For the first time, a commercial probe has made a soft landing on the moon. This seems to be a risky strategy that NASA chose six years ago.
The lunar lander Odysseus takes a selfie with the moon in the background.
Intuitive Machines
The first commercial landing on the moon was successful. On Friday night, a probe from the American company Intuitive Machines landed near the south pole of the moon. The Odysseus lander had to make an extra lap around the moon due to problems with a laser rangefinder. After that everything seems to have worked out as planned. 15 minutes after landing, the ground station received a signal from the lander confirming the landing. Nothing is yet known about the condition of the lander and the instruments on board.
It is the first time in more than fifty years that an American probe has landed on the moon. And it is the first time ever that a commercial company has achieved this. This is a certificate of maturity for private space travel. Until now, the ambitions of private space companies have ended in near-Earth space. Now the moon and other destinations are also within reach. The seeds that pioneers like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos planted ten years ago seem to be blossoming.
This is an encouraging signal. Colonization of the moon and future flights to Mars can only be successful if government space agencies and the private space industry work together. Otherwise the costs will grow astronomically.
What Intuitive Machines has achieved cannot be overstated. In recent years, several probes from private companies have crashed on the moon. The mission of a second American company also ended in failure in January.
NASA is confirmed in its course
The soft landing on the moon is not just a huge success for Intuitive Machines. NASA can also feel confirmed in the course it took in 2018 under its then science director Thomas Zurbuchen.
At that time, plans for the Artemis program were taking shape in the USA, which is intended to bring NASA and its partners back to the moon. NASA was clear that a permanent human presence had to be prepared through unmanned missions. These are intended to scientifically explore the moon and explore the possibility of extracting water and other raw materials there, without which settlement is hardly possible.
This task should have been carried out by a rover equipped with scientific instruments. But in 2018 the project was stopped for cost reasons. NASA decided to radically change course. Instead of bringing the instruments to the moon on their own, this task was placed in private hands.
In 2018, the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program was launched and funded with $2.6 billion over a period of ten years. Since then, eight contracts with a total volume of more than one billion dollars have been awarded to private American companies such as Intuitive Machines and Astrobotic Technology. More are to follow in the next few years.
Who dares Wins
How daring this NASA strategy is became apparent a few weeks ago. After a leak in a fuel tank, Astrobotic Technology‘s lunar lander had to be deliberately crashed. 110 million dollars burned up in the atmosphere.
One can imagine what would have happened in the USA if the second, similarly expensive mission had also failed. NASA would then have had to ask itself whether taxpayers’ money would be better spent with established companies such as Boeing or Lockheed Martin, with which NASA had worked in the past.
In contrast to the CLPS program, however, this was not based on fixed prices. Rather, NASA had to cover all costs and also guarantee the companies a profit. The result was space missions that often ended successfully, but were extremely expensive. The landing of the Odysseus lander on the moon proves that there is another way.