IM-1

IM-1 was a lunar mission that was carried out in February 2024 jointly by a partnership between the NASA CLPS program and Intuitive Machines (IM), using an Nova-C lunar lander. IM named their lunar lander as its Odysseus lander. The Odysseus lander was the first commercial lunar lander to have successfully soft-landed on the Moon.

After contact with the lunar surface the lander tipped to an unplanned 30 degree angle. All instrument payloads remained functional and the mission was deemed successful. Intuitive Machines initially stated there was a possibility the lander could wake up in about three weeks when the sun comes out, but on March 23 the company announced its conclusion that the lander's electronics had not survived the lunar night, and the mission was declared over.

Odysseus's "rough" soft Moon landing is the first soft lunar landing of any kind for an American-made spacecraft since Apollo 17 in 1972. It is the first soft lunar landing by a private company. Steve Altemus, CEO of IM, says it is the first liquid methane and liquid oxygen (methalox)-powered spacecraft to fire beyond low-earth orbit, and it is also the first methalox spacecraft to land on an off-world celestial body. Odysseus carried six payloads developed by NASA in addition to others from commercial and educational customers.

Background and selection
In December 2017, Space Policy Directive 1 signaled an intention to return astronauts to the Moon. Excerpts from NASA documents obtained by The New York Times suggested the agency would prioritize the private spaceflight sector. In November 2018, NASA announced the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, selecting nine companies to deploy payloads for the agency. In May 2019, NASA announced that Astrobotic Technology, Intuitive Machines, and Orbit Beyond would develop lunar landers, awarding Intuitive Machines US$77 million. Intuitive Machines was paid US$118 million to develop the Odysseus lunar lander used in the IM-1 mission.

The IM-1 mission in February 2024 followed the Peregrine mission by Astrobotic Technology, which launched in January 2024. The Peregrine landing at Gruithuisen Domes was abandoned when a propellant leak was observed after launch, and the spacecraft was guided to re-enter Earth's atmosphere.

Mission hardware


Odysseus was equipped with six instruments developed by NASA, including a laser retroreflector array, a lidar navigation device, a stereo camera, a low-frequency radio receiver, the Lunar Node-1 beacon, and an instrument to monitor propellant levels. Additionally, a camera built by students at Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, a planned Moon telescope, and a Jeff Koons art project were also on board. In total the payloads comprise six NASA scientific instruments and six commercial instruments (five of the latter being scientific and one cultural).

Odysseus landed at the Malapert-A crater and will stay active there for about a week, before the Sun sets at the landing site. The Odysseus lander is not designed to survive the lunar night, which lasts about two weeks.

The lander has a chip with works of 200 artists, including works of Pablo Picasso, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Jeff Koons and Bram Reijnders. The lander carries the sculpture Moon Phases by Jeff Koons within its payload. This is the first sculpture installation to reach the Moon since Paul Van Hoeydonck's Fallen Astronaut sculpture was placed on the Moon by David Scott of Apollo 15 in 1971. Koons describes Moon Phases as, "125 miniature Moon sculptures, each approximately one inch in diameter."

The lander also carries the Lunaprise time capsule, which includes the Lunar Library compiled by the Arch Mission Foundation. The Lunar Library includes content from the English Wikipedia and the Rosetta Project. Also included onboard is an archive of musical recordings, which features songs by Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, and Elvis Presley, among other musicians.

A Radio Frequency Mass Gauge (RFMG) on board estimated how much propellant was available during the IM-1 mission. This was the first long-duration test of an RFMG on a standalone spacecraft.

Prior to launch
In December 2023, Odysseus arrived at Kennedy Space Center for processing. On January 31, 2024, the Odysseus spacecraft was encapsulated in the payload fairing of its Falcon 9 Block 5 launch vehicle. On February 13, IM announced that two wet dress rehearsals loading Odysseus with propellants had been successful and they were ready for launch.

Launch


A reusable Falcon 9 booster carrying Odysseus lifted off from LC-39A in Florida at 06:05 UTC on February 15, 2024. The booster returned to LZ-1 and the expended Falcon 9 upper stage delivered the spacecraft to its translunar trajectory.

Originally planned to launch on February 13, SpaceX postponed the launch after reporting a technical issue with propellant loaded onto the lander.

Early operations
After separation from the launch vehicle, the Nova Control operations center established communication with the lander and conducted initial checkouts. Images captured by the spacecraft after separation from the launch vehicle were released on February 17.

Commissioning burn
The lander was scheduled to perform a main engine "commissioning burn" on February 15. Trent Martin, Intuitive Machines vice president of Space Systems, described this as a "critical step" for the mission. After reporting issues with the IM-1 star tracker and adjustment of the liquid oxygen line cooling time IM reported a successful commissioning burn on February 16. The maneuver resulted in a 21 m/s change in the lander's velocity.

Trajectory correction
Intuitive Machines planned for up to three trajectory adjustment maneuvers during the trans-lunar phase of the mission. The first was completed on February 18, and after the second maneuver on February 20, there was no need for a third.

On February 20, Intuitive Machines reported that Odysseus had completed approximately 72% of its journey to the Moon's surface.

Lunar orbit
Odysseus performed its lunar orbit insertion (LOI) on February 21, altering its velocity by 800 m/s. Intuitive Machines reported the 408-second main engine LOI burn placed the lander in a 92 km lunar orbit. On February 22 IM indicated a "lunar correction maneuver" had raised the orbit.

The lander spent approximately 24 hours orbiting the Moon before its descent to the lunar surface on February 22. On February 21, while still in orbit, Odysseus sent back high-resolution images of the lunar surface.

Intuitive Machines adjusted the descent burn parameters based on data from the lunar orbit insertion burn. IM indicated the risks undertaken during the lunar landing phase of the mission would be a "challenge". A later report indicated that, as the lander was being prepared for its descent to the surface, mission controllers determined a safety switch on the primary laser rangefinder system had not been activated during pre-launch preparations. Teams on the ground worked around the issue by reprogramming Odysseus to use data from an experimental NASA payload, the Navigation Doppler Lidar for Precise Velocity and Range Sensing.

EagleCam
The EagleCam is a deployable CubeSat camera system designed especially to photograph the lunar landing of the Nova-C Odysseus lander on the Moon. Photographs taken during the lunar landing of the Odysseus lander may also have enabled a better understanding of the dynamics of lunar landings on the lunar regolith and rock surfaces in the vicinity of the Moon's south pole. Such a better understanding of the local lunar surface features should assist with preparations for upcoming scheduled additional landings at the lunar south pole.

The CubeSat was piggybacked with the lander and launched on a Falcon 9 rocket to the Moon via direct-intercept trajectory. This lunar landing took place on 22 February 2024. Just before landing, at approximately 30 m above the lunar surface, Odysseus was to eject this CubeSat. Once ejected, the EagleCam was supposed to semi-hard land on the lunar surface somewhere near the lander at 10 m/s. From the surface, the EagleCam was planned to capture the first third-person images of a lunar landing. However, due to complications arising from a software patch which reconfigured the lander's sensors used during the final decent to the moon and landing, it was decided that EagleCam would not be ejected during the landing phase. It was later ejected on 28 February but failed to capture images of IM-1 post-landing, the main aim of its mission. “We reset the visual processing unit and powered up the EagleCam, and were able to eject it, and (we) ejected it about 4 meters away from the vehicle safely. However, either in camera or in the Wi-Fi signal back to the lander, something might not be working correctly. So, the Embry‑Riddle team is working on that and wrestling with that to see if there’s anything they can do,” Steve Altemus, CEO of Intuitive Machines commented on EagleCam in a NASA-IM mission update. EagleCam intended to utilize a Wi-Fi connection with the Odysseus lander to relay its images back to Earth, though this did not come to fruition due to complications. Successful ejection and transmission of other data types made EagleCam partially successful in its intended demonstration.

The EagleCam CubeSat was designed and manufactured by staff and students at the Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University.

Lunar landing


A favored landing site in 2020 was between the Sea of Serenity (Mare Serenitatis) and the Sea of Crises (Mare Crisium). Lunar maria are large plains formed when lava flowed into ancient impact basins. Later, a lunar highlands location near the south pole of the Moon was chosen for the landing, since that region is believed to have a source of water for a future lunar base.

The Malapert-A crater area 300 km from the lunar south pole was chosen because it appeared to be a relatively flat and safe place near the pole to land, amongst other considerations.

After making a last-minute software patch to the lander's altitude monitoring systems, Odysseus began its landing sequence at 23:11 UTC (6:11 p.m. EST) on February 22 and landed near Malapert A—an area determined to contain water ice—at 23:23 UTC (6:23 p.m. EST). Controllers confirmed that faint communications were received from the lander. The lander was initially thought to be in a fully vertical orientation, based on stale telemetry. It was later determined to have landed at a 30 degree angle, with its solar panels and scientific instrumentation functionally oriented, but with its radio transmission rates somewhat reduced due to the unexpected angle of the lander's antennas.

The lander appeared to most probably have lost one or more of its 6 landing struts and to be resting on an externally mounted helium tank. (The only non-functional payload is a passive Moon Phases art sculpture, on the side facing towards the ground.) Odysseus became the first American spacecraft moon landing since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 and the first commercial lunar lander. The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite made an intentional hard landing in 2009 following deorbit.

Reporting by Kenneth Chang in The New York Times includes a detailed description of the landing anomaly: "Tim Crain, the company’s chief technology officer, said the spacecraft had been designed to stay upright when landing even on a slope of 10 degrees or more. The navigation software was programmed to look for a spot where the slope was five degrees or less. Because the laser instruments on Odysseus for measuring altitude were not working during descent, the spacecraft landed faster than planned on a 12-degree slope. That exceeded its design limits. Odysseus skidded along the surface, broke one of its six legs and tipped to its side."

Surface operations
On February 23, Intuitive Machines reported that the IM-1 Odysseus lander was still "alive and well", and that IM was continuing to receive data on the vehicle's status and whether the scientific payloads could still be deployed. Intuitive Machines executives said they were working to reconfigure antennas to increase downlink rates but did not estimate what sort of data rates they expected.

On February 26, Intuitive Machines released the first images from the surface taken by the lunar probe. Based on Earth and moon positioning, the IM team reported that flight controllers would continue to communicate with Odysseus until Tuesday (February 27) morning. As of February 28, Odysseus was still receiving power, and all six NASA payloads were providing good data. In a press conference the same day, Intuitive Machines said the lander was in its final hours of operation as the sun moved out of view of the one illuminated solar panel. On February 29, Odysseus lost power and shut down with the start of the lunar night. However, the company did not rule out bringing Odysseus back to life after the two-week lunar night. Executives said they would try contacting the lander in two to three weeks.

About one month after Odysseus landed on the Moon, Intuitive Machines reported that they could not re-establish contact with the lander after the lunar night, bringing an end to the IM-1 mission.