by Eight days after the start, a second commercially built Moon Lander, which was built by intuitive machines in Houston, is on Thursday near the moon-south poles to evaluate the surroundings, in which the NASA astronauts were to land in the agency’s artemis program.
Known as Athena, it was expected that the IM-2 spaceship will be released from the orbit at 11:32 a.m. and 100 miles from the south pole of the moon will be removed. The spaceship is loaded with sophisticated instruments, a small rover, experimental cell communication equipment and a rocket -powered “hopper”, which will jump from location to location near the landing.
A camera on board the Athena countries of intuitive machines shows the spaceship around the moon in orbit, with the earth in the deep black of space away about 240,000 miles. If everything goes well, the country will descend to the touchdown near the southern pole of the moon on Thursday. / Credit: Intuitive machines
The solar -powered Athena will have about 10 days to complete its observations and measurements before the sun and darkness sweep over the landing site at the end of the moon day.
The lander brakes into the orbit on Monday, Five days after the start. On Thursday morning, Athena’s main engine is expected to fly over the other side of the moon and begin a process to reduce the other side of the orbit from around 62 miles to a little more than 6 miles.
During the coast up to the lower height, the landing cameras and laser will use in its relative navigation system to constantly monitor the height and speed and keep the spaceship up to date.
If it approaches the goal, the main engine is referred to in a maneuver, which is referred to as drive relegation initiation in order to reduce the speed of the spacecraft by the necessary 4,000 miles per hour. As soon as the braking maneuver has been completed, Athena is programmed so that it turns into a vertical tail-down orientation for the last phase of the descent.
Near the landing site, Athena descends to about 7 miles per hour and at a height of a little more than 30 feet slowly up to a scorched 2.2 miles per hour for the last drop on the surface in moon highlands, which are known as Mons Mouton region, about 100 miles away from the South Pole.
The concept of an artist of The Athena Lander on the moon, about 100 miles from the moon south pole. A high -tech drill can be observed from the left country, dig into the surface to measure the temperatures and the floor composition with a mass spectrometer. The box on the right landing bone uses a small rover on the surface. / Credit: Intuitive machines
The NASA aims at the southern polar region for astronaut landings, largely because data from all -round satellites indicate that ice cream can be present in permanently shaded craters that never see the light of the sun and are among the coldest areas in the solar system.
The water molecules were probably delivered over billion years due to comet effects and interactions between moon dust and the electrically charged sun wind.
If everything goes well, the Grace Hopper will jump back to the lander for around a quarter mile from Athena from Athena from Athena from Athena and his observations with 4G/LTE cell network devices made available by Nokia.
The Grace Hopper is expected to make five jumps, with the fourth carrying him into the darkness of a permanently shaded crater in which ice could be present. ICE, if it can be extracted, it would enable future astronauts to generate water, air and rocket fuel on the moon and to avoid the high costs for shipping from the earth. / Credit: Intuitive machines
Other instruments on the lander are looking for the chemical traces of water and other compounds as well as measurements of the floor temperature and the composition. Two small rovers are on board to explore the landing site and test innovative mobility systems.
And in a coincidence of timing and place, the cameras of the landing on March 14 will photograph a solar eclipse when the earth fits just before the sun and throws its shadow on the moon.
First Lander Intuitive Machines called Odysseus, Last year successfully landed on the moon, but it hit the surface harder than expected, while she moved a little laterally, which led to it tipping over on the side. The spaceship was still working, it was unable to carry out all planned observations.
Intuitive machine engineers analyzed the telemetry and could find out what went wrong. Athena is equipped with improved software and navigation tools to prevent the same problem from occurring in the second time.
Second moonland to reach the moon this year
Athena’s arrival is the second of three that reaches the moon this year.
A lander based on Austin Firefly Aerospace successfully landed On the moon early Sunday, March 2, the commercially developed Blue Ghost Lander is equipped with 10 instruments sponsored by NASA, with which data is to be collected for the Artemis program.
NASA agreed to pay Firefly Aerospace $ 101 million for the delivery of the science instruments and technological demonstrations sponsored by the agency to the moon surface. The instruments cost NASA another 44 million US dollars.
The Athena Lander will use a small, commercially built rover to explore the landing site and carry out scientific observations. The rover and the hopper send data back to Athena to use the mobile phone technology provided by Nokia to relay. / Credit: Intuitive machines
Athena’s instruments and technological demonstrations were also financed by NASA. The agency paid the company $ 62.5 million in order to deliver a powerful drilling and mass spectrometer, which is known together as Prime-1, to the surface of the moon.
The “Tipping Point” technology development program of NASA paid 15 million US dollars for the integration of the Nokia mobile communication and another 41 million US dollars for intuitive machines to finance the “Grace” funnel.
Another 89 million US dollars paid a lunar atllite built by Lockheed Martin, which was started on the same Falcon 9 rocket as Athena. But the Lunar Trailblazer satellite was out of contact with the earth shortly after the start and has not been heard since then.
Blue Ghost and Athena were both largely financed by the CLPS program (Commercial Lunar Payoad Services) of NASA. The CLPS initiative aims to encourage the private industry to start the payload of agencies to the moon in order to collect the necessary science and technical data before Artemis astronauts later start working on the surface this decade.
As if Blue Ghost and Athena weren’t enough, a Japanese lander who became known as resilience became known in January The same Falcon 9 rocket that increased the blue spirit into space. The resilience of Ispace in Tokyo has led a longer way to the moon with low energy and will only arrive in early June.
Dolly Parton’s husband, Carl Dean, died at the age of 82. Here is a review of your love story
Clock: Trump’s full address for the congress
The Vatican says that Pope Francis is no longer in mechanical ventilation
