U.S. lands unmanned Odysseus spacecraft on moon

Yahoo! ^ | Thu, February 22, 2024 at 6:08 PM CST | Dylan Stableford and Caitlin Dickson

[Red Badger]

An unmanned, robotic lunar lander launched by a private U.S. company landed on the moon Thursday evening.

“We can confirm, without a doubt, that our equipment is on the surface of the moon,” said Stephen Altemus, CEO of Intuitive Machines, the Houston-based company that operated the Odysseus spacecraft. “Welcome to the moon.”

As it approached the surface of the moon, Odysseus lost contact with NASA, resulting in several anxious minutes for those who worked on the joint project. But after approximately 15 minutes of searching, officials confirmed that they were once again receiving signals from the spacecraft.

“A commercial lander named Odysseus, powered by a company called Intuitive Machines, launched up on a Space X rocket, carrying a bounty of NASA scientific instruments and bearing the dream of a new adventure, a new adventure in science, innovation and American leadership, well, all of that aced the landing of a lifetime,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said after contact had been reestablished. “Today for the first time in more than a half century, the U.S. has returned to the moon.”

Altemus had estimated that Odysseus had an 80% chance of successfully landing on the moon, citing previous failed attempts as an advantage. “We’ve stood on the shoulders of everybody who’s tried before us,” Altemus said.

It was the first American mission to land on the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972 and the first private spacecraft ever to make a soft landing there.

While it was a private mission, NASA paid Intuitive Machines $118 million to deliver six instruments to the moon. And the U.S. space agency provided streaming video of the landing.

[Freedom4US]

We’ll get to that later.

You can’t bring something up, spout nonsense, and then try to change the subject. That’s what leftists do. We don’t do that here.

Answer the question.

[Freedom4US]

Before Apollo 8 apparently they weren’t too sure how far VHF worked in space, they allocated a channel on the spacecraft and played music constantly, both for something to listen to if they wanted, and to see how far it was a usable signal. I can’t remember what the figures posted were though a lot farther out than the engineers thought. Maybe halfway or 3/4 of the way there.

They used S band communications, picked up by sensitive large radio telescopes in 3 locations around the world. One of them is in the Mojave at Camp Irwin. A lot of the communications gear was made in Cedar Rapids, Iowa at Collins Radio, I think Philco and RCA and all kinds of folks got involved. For an engineer or mechanic or welder or even bucking rivets it must have been extremely gratifying.

[linMcHlp]

02/18/2014

Moon Lasers Are Creating the Galaxy’s Fastest Internet

NASA and MIT are shooting "lasers full of Internet" to a ship named LADEE that's exploring the moon's atmosphere. According to NASA, speeds have reached 622 megabits per second (Hong Kong tops out at 63.6).

Right now, the agency is using a pulsed laser beam to transmit a pair of HD video signals to and from the moon. The 239,000 miles between the New Mexico ground station and the moon marks the "longest two-way laser communication ever demonstrated," according to NASA.

In one test, NASA sent an HD video of Bill Nye (the science guy) from a Massachusetts station to the New Mexico transmitters to the moon—and back through the same route—with just a seven-second delay. It takes 1.3 seconds for a signal to make the one-way trip to the moon.

NASA says the information it's receiving now is so precise it can determine LADEE's distance from Earth to within half an inch.