Moon landing: The spacecraft Odysseus prepares for its shot at the moon
The Odysseus spacecraft has a hexagonal shape with six landing legs, approximately 4.5 meters high and 1.5 meters wide. For fans of “Dr. Who,” the science fiction television show, the lander’s body is about the size of the Tardis, the time-traveling spacecraft that looks on the outside like an old British police telephone booth.
NASA is the primary customer for the Intuitive Machines flight, paying the company $77 million to deliver six instruments to the moon’s surface. They are:
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A laser retroreflector array to reflect back laser beams fired from lunar orbit. That will act as a precise location marker for Odysseus. During the Apollo missions, astronauts left similar retroreflectors on the moon.
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A LIDAR instrument will accurately measure the spacecraft’s altitude and speed as it descends to the surface. LIDAR is similar to radar, except it uses laser light instead of radio waves.
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A stereo camera will capture videos of the dust plume kicked up by the lander’s engines during landing.
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A low-frequency radio receiver will measure the effects of charged particles near the moon’s surface on radio signals. This will provide information that can help in the design of future radio observations of the moon’s surface.
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The Lunar Node-1 navigation beacon aims to demonstrate an autonomous navigation system.
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The lander’s fuel tank contains a NASA instrument that uses radio waves to measure how much propellant is left in the tank.
The lander also carries a few other payloads, including a camera built by students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida; a precursor instrument for a future lunar telescope; and an art project by Jeff Koons.