:quality(75)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/elcomercio/UW5IC5Y5FNEEPD6KYCDFD5X7KI.jpg "Odysseus takes a photo of the Moon before his historic Moon landing in over half a century")
The module Odysseuswhich is scheduled to land this Thursday in Moon in what will be the first landing on the moon USA In more than half a century, it sent back a photo of the lunar surface before its planned landing at 6:24 pm ET (11:24 pm GMT).
Intuitive Machinescompany responsible for landing on the Moon, changed the landing time twice this Thursday due to “correction maneuvers“and the decision to carry out”an additional orbit” before descending.
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The photo taken by the American private company’s module shows the northern sectors of the Moon as it heads towards the South Polean unexplored region, according to the US space agency PAN.
The company of Texaswho will make history as the first American to set foot on the Moonexplained that the navigation camera of the Odysseus captured the image “of Bel’kovich K Crater in the northern equatorial highlands of the Moon”.
He highlighted that the image, which shows a grayish surface with ripples, is a crater approximately 50 kilometers in diameter with mountains in the center, formed when this ecosystem was formed.
Odysseus took off on February 15th from Florida with several NASA experiments and is expected to land this Thursday on the Moon, where it will have a few days to carry out its experiments before it practically freezes, due to the low lunar temperatures.
Odysseus, from the series Nova-Cthere are about seven days left before the lunar night reaches the south pole, rendering it inoperative.
It is not expected that this module, 4.3 meters high and 675 kilos in weight, and the first American to reach the Moon after the Apollo 17 In 1972, I returned to Earth.
Specifically, the disembarkation will be close to the massif of Malapertabout 300 kilometers from the Moon’s south pole, an area full of “uncertainty”, according to NASA experts.
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Researchers believe the area is made up of material from the lunar highlands, similar to the Apollo 16 landing site.
The main objective of this mission, the IM-1is to take scientific instruments and technological demonstrations to the south pole of the Moon.
Odysseus traveled aboard a rocket Falcon 9 of the company EspaçoX which took off in the early hours of February 15 without any problems from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in downtown Florida.
This is the second mission of the initiative Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) from NASA, after the Pilgrimand is also part of the Artemis return to the Moon program.
Last January, the company’s Peregrine module Astrobotic Technology failed in its attempt to land on the Moon with NASA and other commercial payloads due to fuel supply problems, among others.
According to Intuitive Machines, the mission seeks to create an economical platform that will transport NASA scientific instruments to the Moon, as well as commercial cargo, to pave the way for a sustainable human presence on that natural satellite and its surroundings.
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The Moon landing site is one of 13 regions NASA is considering for the mission. Artemis IIIwhich will be the first manned Moon landing mission of this program and the first manned flight of the lander HLS Starshipfrom SpaceX.
Among a variety of NASA instruments carried by Odysseus are ones for better fuel measurement and cameras to capture sound and still images of the dust cloud created by the module as it begins its descent to the lunar surface until it shuts down.
Also devices to study the interaction of natural and human activity and to analyze the speed and direction of the vehicle and the distance to the surface with high precision during the descent to landing.
Source: Elcomercio
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