Le Pays De France - US prestige at stake as Texas company launches for the Moon

Intuitive Machines, the Houston-based company leading mission "IM-1," is aiming to become the first company to achieve a soft touchdown on Earth's celestial sibling, and land the first US robot on the surface since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

Its golf cart-sized Nova-C lander named "Odysseus" will blast off on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:57 am local time (0557 GMT).

"We understand and welcome the responsibility of our IM-1 and mission as we hope to become the first commercial company to successfully land on the Moon," the company's Trent Martin told reporters.

It is due reach its landing site Malapert A on February 22, an impact crater 300 kilometers (180 miles) from the south pole, where NASA hopes to eventually build a long term presence and harvest ice for both drinking water and rocket fuel under Artemis, its flagship Moon-to-Mars program.

- Back to the Moon -

NASA paid Intuitive Machines $118 million to ship science hardware to better understand and mitigate environmental risks for astronauts, the first of whom are scheduled to land no sooner than 2026.

The instruments include cameras to document the effect of engine plume on the surface, a device to analyze dust haze that appears during lunar twilight, and precision landing technology that uses pulses of light from a laser.

NASA scientist Susan Lederer said the mission would go further south than any lander has been on the Moon "and will give us an opportunity to test our instruments in this very harsh environment where the Sun is always low on horizon."

There is also more colorful cargo aboard, including a digital archive of human knowledge and 125 mini-sculptures of the Moon by the artist Jeff Koons.

After touchdown, the payloads are expected to run for roughly seven days before lunar night sets in on the south pole, rendering Odysseus inoperable.

IM-1 is the second mission under a NASA initiative called Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS), which the space agency created to delegate trucking services to the private sector to achieve savings and to stimulate a wider lunar economy.

The first, by Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic, launched in January, but its Peregrine spacecraft was hit by an onboard explosion that caused a fuel leak, and was eventually brought back to burn up in Earth's atmosphere.

- Busy calendar -

Soft landing a robot on the Moon is challenging because a spaceship has to navigate treacherous terrain amid a lag of several seconds in communications with Earth, and use its thrusters for a controlled descent in the absence of an atmosphere that would support parachutes.

Only five nations have succeeded: the Soviet Union was first, then the United States, which is still the only country to also put people on the surface.

In America's long absence, China has landed three times since 2013, India in 2023, and Japan was the latest, last month -- though its robot has struggled to stay powered on after a wonky touchdown left its solar panels pointing the wrong way.

Apart from Astrobotic's failed attempt, two other private initiatives got close: Beresheet, operated by an Israeli nonprofit, crash landed in 2019, while Japanese company ispace also had a "hard landing" last year.

Intuitive Machines has two more launches scheduled for this year, while another Texas company, Firefly Aerospace has one too. Astrobotic will get another shot in late 2024, carrying a NASA rover to the south pole.

(N.Lambert--LPdF)