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Private company landing on the moon today

intuitivemachines.com

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Re: Private company landing on the moon today

#81

Post by ooterness »

ethbr1 wrote: post #3

Curious question: as a private company, how do you determine your lunar orbit parameters after a burn? Are they leveraging Earth/orbit-based radar? Or satellites around the moon? Or something else?

Ground infrastructure is important for space missions.

Intuitive Machines is operating under a NASA contract for Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) [1]. As such, they can negotiate access to NASA resources such as DSN and NEN for this mission. Intuitive Machines has also built several ground stations of their own [2]. These allow communications with the spacecraft as well as the range/velocity measurements needed for accurate navigation.

I'm the longer term, the Artemis program plans to build out LunaNet [3] for improved communications and GPS-like navigation services.

[1] https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/clps/intuitive-machine...

[2] https://www.intuitivemachines.com/post/commercial-lunar-netw...

[3] https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/lunanet-empowering-arte...

Re: Private company landing on the moon today

#82

Post by sandworm101 »

me_me_me wrote: post #64
sandworm101 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some horror stories coming out of certain US states, mostly surrounding woman's reproductive rights. There are crackdowns on old ways of doing things such as driving your daughter to another state in order to have an abortion. That can now be a very serious felony for all involved. Many people with kids, and many young women, are starting to actively avoid moving to these states. This is growing problem for…

It is chilling that this reads like a dystopian novel prompt. And on the other side of US men are women, women are men, and nobody is anything and everything at the same time. What a time to be alive.

Dystopian but also something unique to the US. Each state is effectively a different country with sometimes radically different laws. But people are free to move about and select which set of laws they want to live under, at least so long as they are not pregnant. New parents may move to state A so their daughter can have reproducer freedom. Or a billionaire may move to state B so he can more easily sell stocks without being taxed. No other country organizes itself around such a pick-your-laws scheme.

Re: Private company landing on the moon today

#83

Post by ctrlp »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #66
ctrlp wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what does your having a daughter have to do with Texas, Florida, or Alabama? Don't you have a daughter wherever you live?

If you are in the US, you must look at the taliban with disdain, for how they are treating women. As a European, we look at the regimes in the states you mentioned with the same disdain. No way I would ever consider living there.

Have you ever been to the US? You sound like a provincial who reads too much propaganda.

Re: Private company landing on the moon today

#84

Post by 1234letshaveatw »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #56
jeremiahbuckley wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m confused about this from an economic standpoint. Assume you could put aside an additional $5k while living in these states, wouldn’t that provide a hedge for the medical needs of your daughter? If needed, you could then travel to a location that provides what you are concerned about. (Not to get hung up on “$5k”, you could substitute any arbitrary number for this cost-benefit judgement) If move opened the possibi…

I'm Dutch, an additional 5k per month would not buy me the feeling of safety I enjoy in the Netherlands. It's not just medical bills. It's also the crime and rape rates. You don't cover death and trauma with insurance.

I'm a citizen in the US, and conversely I wouldn't move to the Netherlands for any amount of money. Everyone values different things differently I suppose.

Re: Private company landing on the moon today

#85

Post by maronato »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #40
dylan604 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the "as a private company" qualifier. The math is the same, and doesn't care if it's private/public.

I'm not the person you replied to, but I assume they meant something like "as a non space agency". Ie how are they tracking the lander? How are they sending and receiving telemetry? What resources did they use for mission planning and site selection? Perhaps they've built their own comms system for example - maybe even a multi-site one that enables continuous contact - or maybe they're using NASA/ESA/JAXA assets. It…

Their website has all that info. They have their own satellites for comms, and lots of other stuff too.

They seem to either own or co-own all of the hardware

Re: Private company landing on the moon today

#86

Post by shafyy »

Communitivity wrote: post #8

[flagged]

I'm suprised by the number of replies here that don't get why it's unsafe for girls and women in Texas (and some other US states). I'm also not American, but you had to be living under a rock in the past months and years if you didn't get wind of the overtunring of Roe vs. Wade and the reproductive rights policies in Texas.

Re: Private company landing on the moon today

#88

Post by datadrivenangel »

adityaathalye wrote: post #2

The private lander's mission control looks like the proverbial two-pizza team. Would it that the silent revolution in spaceflight, hidden under the glamour of reusable rockets, is incredibly sophisticated telemetry, communication, on-board automation? A computing stack that's making the 1x mission control a 10x mission control? I understand there will be other teams elsewhere (delivery vehicle, remote sensing etc. et…

JAXA has done rocket launches with a ground crew of less than 10.

Obviously the extended support staff is much bigger than that to enable so few people to launch a rocket, but the number of people required when things are ready to go can be very small.

Re: Private company landing on the moon today

#89

Post by krapp »

CartyBoston wrote: post #4

The spacecraft has an ad prominently displayed on itself, it's depressing. We will never reproduce the experience of 10 year old me watching the moon landing with my dad. It's all just egos and entertainment now.

We planted an American flag on the moon. An advertisement for the Coca-Cola of American imperialism versus the Pepsi of Soviet communism. The entire space race was literally nothing but ego and propaganda.

Re: Private company landing on the moon today

#90

Post by Someone »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitive_Machines_Nova-C#Eagl...:

“EagleCam to record lunar landing

Just before landing, at approximately 30 m (98 ft) above the lunar surface, the Odysseus lander will eject the EagleCam camera-equipped CubeSat, which will drop onto the lunar surface near the lander, with an impact velocity of about 10 m/s (22 mph). From the surface the EagleCam will attempt to capture the first third-person images of a lunar landing. The EagleCam will use a Wi-Fi connection to the Odysseus lander to relay its images back to Earth.”

That CubeSat is student built. I wonder what camera they have and how hard it will be to make it record the landing. Will it orient itself during that six-ish second drop or can it move the camera after landing? Does it have a fisheye lens to increase the likelihood of the lander being in its field of vision?

Unfortunately, their project page (https://erau.edu/eaglecam) seems to be light on such details.

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