Private company landing on the moon today | Hacker News Reader

Private company landing on the moon today

intuitivemachines.com

516 pointsSigKill9262 comments

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.

I always assumed that space was noisy enough that things like wifi wouldn't work on the lunar surface.

If basic radio worked for talking between suits and the landing craft in '69, it surely shouldn't be a surprise that modern frequency-hopping, error corrected, wireless comms, with much more sensitive equipment would work well?

The walkie-talkie toys I had as a kid in the 90s had at least 10x the range of modern home wifi routers. Not to mention how far radio stations broadcast. I'm guessing that's the context they're working from.

That's because of different frequencies and power caps that are enforced by the FCC. If your WiFi broadcast with the same power, the frequency space would be unusable by your neighbors for their WiFi. The range of WiFi is very purposefully sabotaged to make it useful for more than just you.

And also because our kid-era walkie talkies were VHF (or at least mine were) which is a much lower frequency band than wifi. At a given power level, lower frequencies travel farther (i.e. around obstacles) but can't transfer as many bits as wifi.

I wonder how much power the wifi antenna on the cubesat is pumping out.

Assuming you are talking about FCC Part 15 regulations for 2.4 GHz, you couldn't be more wrong. There is no 'sabotage'

The EIRP is 4 watts in 2.4 GHz band. More than enough to wipe out your neighbors. Also more than enough to get absolutely tremendous range in line of sight conditions.

I can purchase and install an unlimited number of 2.4 GHz Part 15 devices, rendering the band useless to anyone so long as I am attempting to use those devices in a manner consistent with their application. As another Part 15 user, you have no recourse. If a licensed user complains to the FCC, they may decide I have to stop using them and notify me as such. Note: one of my neighbors does this, by having an AP on every 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz channel.

Newest Wifi 6 stuff in the US has a power limit on some spectrum and some usages, but nowhere near as low as what I was hoping for.

> Note: one of my neighbors does this, by having an AP on every 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz channel.

Sounds like a fun and ethical excuse to DOS some WIFI routers.

Why isn’t the limit 40 watts? Or 400? Why is there a limit at all?

You can pedantically criticize the use of the word “sabotage”, but then you’d be entirely missing the point.

400 watts would cause RF burns at 2.4 ghz.

And most people have a 1200 watt version in their kitchen for that exact purpose!

And all of that without an appreciable atmosphere to get in the way

If you're above the frequency at which the ionosphere becomes reflective (around 30 MHz), why should space be noisier than the Earth's surface? Anything propagating there will reach down here (unless it's something really short wave absorbed by molecular bands in the atmosphere.)

In practice, it's going to be noiser down here, because of all the sources down here.

Noise you can correct for with directional antennas, filters, and/or more signal processing voodoo. Meanwhile you benefit from space being actually empty - no pesky atmosphere in the way to attenuate signals (though also no layers to bounce the signal off), and no other transmitters in your area. Inverse square law works to your advantage in this context.

I don't know specifically about wifi but, check out EME bounces. With a hand held ham radio on the 6M band and a directional antenna made from like $6 of supplies from your local hardware store, you can have a radio that can bounce a signal off the moon and talk to someone on the other side of the earth.

It’s more like the 2m and 70cm bands, and really big expensive antennas. You can bounce signals off of meteor trails with a cheap antenna and 6m radios, though!

Been out of it awhile so i was thinking 6m, mighta gotten mixed with the scatter-e propagation. But I knew a guy down in San Diego who used to do EME bounces with cheap directional antennas he homemade. But that guy was also an EE at Qualcomm there.

But that was 6 years ago and since I've moved up to Oregon, I havnt gotten to do much ham stuff because I could never hit the repeaters around here. Maybe they are no longer up, maybe its all the hills and volcanic rock?

You can make it work with normal human antennas, as long as the other person has the big ones! I could never contact someone with the same antenna and radio as me via the MOON, but I can on certain days be heard by those big dogs!

Meteor scatter is pretty fun though!

The simplest way to do it is probably just to have a high quality 360 camera, that way you mostly get around the problem of orientation

Yes, but even that isn’t simple, I think. They’d not want to land on top of it, so they’d have to push it out from the lander or have it propel itself away from the lander. If they push it out and it doesn’t have a way to stabilize itself, keeping the lens pointing upwards then will require tight control over that push.

So, I guessed (see below) you’d need power to make the sat orient itself.

However, I googled a bit more, and found this: https://mynews13.com/fl/orlando/space/2024/02/21/embry-riddl..., which says:

“EagleCam will be spring ejected from the Nova-C class lander Odysseus about 30 meters above the lunar surface during the final descent. It will take three images a second from each of its three cameras (a total of nine images a second), capturing its six-second freefall to the surface and Odysseus’ descent and soft landing. About an hour after landing, our team will receive the five images of our choosing. During descent, Dr. Henderson and I will be timing events in landing sequence to match to image numbers to choose the first five images we bring back to Earth. Once we have those images, I will post them directly to @eraueaglecam on Instagram. Shortly after that, they will also be available on @spacetechnologieslab on Instagram and @SpaceTechLab on X (formerly Twitter).”

So, it isn’t a 360 camera, and they’re making 50-ish images and hoping for the best. Doesn’t look like the sat has rockets or that they’re trying to make it possible to make more photos after impact on the moon.

If my guesses/intuition is right we won’t see the actual touchdown (still cool to have anything, of course), but corrections welcome.

Have two. One on each side. Doesn't matter if one ends up in the regolith.

It’d surely land sidewise. :D

Which is fine. 360 degree camera.

Have three, 120 degrees apart. They'll double as backup landing legs.

Wouldn’t be any better. You’d need 4 to be able to reliably land with one pointed out of the regolith. That’s probably pushing it in terms of mass. 3 wouldn’t be any better than 2 though.

> push it out from the lander

Selfie stick sounds simpler.

That's an impressive school project! First university to land on the moon

Unless they would have build and operated the rocket themself (and not SpaceX), I would consider that a false clickbait headline.

A decade ago, maybe. Today? SpaceX is commoditizing access to space - we're at the point we can start treating Earth-orbit delivery as a given, i.e. just a service you pay money for.

Earth orbit maybe. But here we are at earth-moon. And the lander is not build or operated by the school/university either.

Flying to the moon is the easy part. Landing is the trick.

Flying is not so easy either, and the landing is done by the private company, not by the school.

Weight it by funding and I’ll bet you the school cube sat comes out far ahead.

Funny that the student project will be the first private landing followed by the commercial vehicle?

I was a part of this project over a decade ago when I attended ERAU! At the time the goal was just to take pictures of earth. It is so cool to see how the scope has expanded over the years.

Our student group drove down to Cape Canaveral to pick up and haul a clean room back to the university that NASA donated for use to build the satellite. I will never forget those experiences.

According to https://www.npr.org/2024/02/23/1233677833/lunar-lander-odyss... it's a cube with four cameras, which was supposed to pop off 30 seconds before touchdown to capture pictures of Odysseus' landing. But EagleCam was deliberately powered off during the final descent because of the navigation switch and stayed attached to the lander.

The team will try to release EagleCam in the coming days, so it can photograph the lander from roughly 26 feet (8 meters) away.

Ridiculous this isn't more prominent in mainstream news. Eg. I open Google News to stories of killers and a new real estate tax and some sort of scandal by an actor. This is why I come to HN instead.

It was on NPR today if that makes you feel better

Edit: Front page of a few sites

Reuters: See the right part of the image https://imgur.com/VpGAIBl

CNN: https://imgur.com/TzRtit8

AP News: https://imgur.com/OgrtzrC

NBC: Not so apparent but there https://imgur.com/7itvGeh

NYT: Also not obvious https://imgur.com/4DMDqr0

NPR: Gotta scroll: https://imgur.com/dp5UDCq

I found it on Fox News by search and it's a fair scroll down. I also found in MSNBC by search, but actually don't know where it is just that the word "moon" exists somewhere on that page and for the life of me I cannot see what word is highlighted.

It’s the fourth story on the Washington Post website right now.

And it looks like it crashed… not the website.

It's a major (red background!) story with live coverage on The Guardian site here in Australia.

It's been the #1 headline story on the NYT for a couple of hours at least now. They had the live feed on the homepage too.

Google News is absolute garbage these days. Their algorithmic curation has not kept up with SEO and still treats popularity as a proxy for significance.

It's the top story for me on Google News right now (after the landing).

I wonder if they could have built a better algorithm if they had kept Google Reader around.

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. etc.). But that image is rad too --- from one or a few space agencies co-orchestrating a program to multiples more doing so.

Obviously some version of this has been going on for decades, but somehow the imagery on their website struck a chord.

Linkedin suggests about 250 people. Lots of them with software in the name. Company looks very lean relative to the semiconductor monsters I'm more familiar with.

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.

better, lighter-weight computing stacks have been a huge boost; that's what made cubesats possible. but the much bigger deal is the dramatic drop in launch costs driven by spacex, even though so far that's only a factor of 3.4 https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cost-space-launches-low-e...

with lightweight computers driven by the cellphone industry, it became possible for a small team or even individual to launch a low-power ham radio satellite or weather satellite. but they can't launch a high-resolution space telescope, earth observing satellite, or high-power communications satellite, nor can they do laser communication pointcasting. and lightweight computers are a crucial enabler for starlink-style communications constellations, but there's only one of those, because that's still a big-money kind of project

suppose that, instead, you had 01980s computing power, but the cost of space launch dropped by a factor of 100. if you need to launch a 200-kg satellite to get the sky-observing optical aperture you're looking for so diffraction doesn't cremate you, you don't care if the onboard computers weigh 1 gram or 10 kilograms. (i mean, you do care, because it lets you cut your launch budget 10%, but it's not a dominant determinant of viability.) with saturn v or zenit 2, according to the plot linked above, that launch would cost you a million dollars. today, at falcon heavy's 1500 dollars per kg, it's 300,000 dollars, which is already a radically more feasible project

spacex's 'starship' is supposed to carry 150 tonnes to leo for 10 million dollars. that's 70 dollars a kilogram. our hypothetical 200-kg aditya athalye space telescope satellite would then cost 14000 dollars to launch. it becomes a hobby project comparable in cost to an engine lathe or a camper van. this would change the economics of space in a profound way, far beyond what cellphone chips have done

for comparison, the csis aerospace security project number for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scout_(rocket_family) on that chart was 118500 dollars per kg in 01961. (but of course you couldn't launch a cubesat on it for that price; it was a military thing.) by 01967 saturn v had brought that down by a factor of 22. after that it remained constant for 43 years until falcon 9 in 02010. starship, if it works, will reduce launch costs by that same factor of 22 over the current falcon heavy number i described above, and by a factor of 73 over saturn v

The decline in price per kg from Falcon 9 has made a big difference and yet it's nowhere near as impactful as Starship is going to be... falcon 9 is either too powerful for LEO missions and limited by fairing volume( so can't really launch space stations on a falcon 9) or too weak to push further into GEO and into the solar system. Starship will enable a lot of LEO applications previously unthinkable.

The big improvement is not launch costs, but miniaturization and automation. A university team can make a credible lunar rover or cubesat today using off-the-shelf components. Unlike launch vehicles, that technology did not exist in 001960, or even 002000, at any price.

i came here for an argument, but this is just contradiction

it doesn't matter if you can make a credible lunar rover or not if the price to launch it is three times the grant the nsf will give your university team. given that nasa published their lunar roving vehicle documentation in mostly 0001973, down to circuit schematics and some machining dimensions, i'm pretty sure a university team in 00002000 could have duplicated it for less than the several million dollars the launch would cost. it only took boeing 17 months to design and build them in the first place, and they mostly use technology from the 000001940s (aluminum tubing, nylon webbing, wire mesh wheels, silver-zinc plexiglass batteries, brushed dc motors, cable brakes; fiberglass arm rests and fenders were apparently the highest-tech part and, unsurprisingly, the part that failed)

https://www.nasa.gov/history/alsj/alsj-LRVdocs.html

with respect to cubesats, you're in violent agreement with my comment. you obviously can't put a trs-80 in a cubesat. in 0000002000 you could put a basic stamp in it, but you couldn't get mems gyros and accelerometers, and you weren't going to be able to run your star tracker camera off a pic16. computer and imu miniaturization is a big deal for cubesats. that's one of the main points of my comment

the other main point is that it isn't nearly as big a deal for bigger satellites; when we were launching cubesats (before i joined the team) it was really important that we could use tiny cellphone components, but once we were launching 37kg monstrosities, the fact that the gumstix boards only weighed a few grams was just nice, not critical. the optics weighed a lot more

so tell us, what's your experience?

My big-picture point is simply that electronics are getting small and cheap much faster than launch costs are decreasing, so that is the important trend. We could have a revolution in space exploration and remote sensing even if launch costs flatlined.

Beyond that I'm not sure what we're arguing about, so I'll tap out here.

they aren't commensurable; as ben tilly pointed out, you cannot replace the oxygen you need to breathe with a sufficiently large quantity of granite (without equipment and energy to process it, anyway), and you cannot replace lower launch costs with smaller and cheaper electronics, in particular in the areas you named, space exploration and remote sensing, for the reasons i described

now, bring me a shrubbery!

Oh I don't dispute the fact that reusable vehicles are an incredible leap forward. Anything that manages to launch significantly more payload cheaper and more frequently is awesome.

That said, things like reusability work at all because of precision control which, as far as I can tell, is near-impossible to do in a lightweight package without the cooperation of a compute stack. Same for other kinds of soft landings and autonomous control scenarios.

As an aside: achievements like reusable rockets also became possible because of advances in materials research driven by advances in computer simulation and computer-aided manufacturing. So this is perhaps another under-appreciated layer of the rocketry compute stack.

yes, those are excellent points i strongly agree with

what kinds of new materials are they using in the falcon rockets, do you know?

quite aside from the weight, latency is extremely important to precision control; a factor of 10 in latency may be equivalent to 100× or 1000× more sensor error. so, even if weight was no object and you could mount a dozen 5-tonne 10-megaflops cdc 6600 supercomputers on your reusable rocket as the guidance system, you might still be better off with a 100-megaflops high-end microcontroller, just because it can respond more rapidly to perturbations of homeostasis

> what kinds of new materials are they using in the falcon rockets, do you know?

I was thinking of materials innovation and new materials.

Without looking anything up, I would guess exotic alloys, ceramics, polymers, fuels and fuel mixes etc. at a chemical level, stress/failure modeling at a mechanical level, new manufacturing techniques that exploit properties of existing materials to achieve new capabilities, increased production efficiency for faster turnaround at better tolerances and integrity (because you figured out how to precision weld the thing in a new way) etc.

(edit: clarity)

> A computing stack that's making the 1x mission control a 10x mission control

Isn't this obvious...? Given SpaceX's auto-pilot mission to the moon and all of these latest missions to asteroids and such...?

BTW They land on asteroids because they already have enough rock moons, asteroids are more varied than different surfaces of the moon, no conspiracy here.

(I upvoted you BTW)

Landing in ~ 8 hours.

"The Odysseus moon lander is aiming for a 5:30 p.m. EST (2230 GMT) lunar landing"

https://www.space.com/intuitive-machines-odysseus-moon-landi...

The landing time has been updated to 1524 CST.

https://www.intuitivemachines.com/im-1

There will be a live feed on the Intuitive Machines site above and mirrored on NASA TV+ here: https://plus.nasa.gov/scheduled-video/intuitive-machines-1-l...

The coverage on both live feeds will begin around 1400 CST.

Pretty cheeky of Columbia to sponsor this. They couldn't even make the shoes I bought that were 'absolutely waterproof' actually waterproof. A super light rain would result in wet feet. This didn't even happen in normal sneakers.

But it is all about image I guess.

Columbia is known for incredibly good lifetime warranty- contact them and get something that works for free.

I use mostly Columbia gear for some pretty serious outdoor adventures, and generally consider their waterproof tech, especially outdry rain shells to be the best you can get at any price. However, I don't (and wouldn't) use any of their footwear.

For waterproof footwear, breathable membranes don't work well in my experience, they quickly tear and leak. The membranes are just too delicate for the forces and flexing on a boot. A really well built traditional leather boot with external waterproofing like Sno Seal applied daily is both more breathable, and more waterproof. Failing that, heavy rubber boots like commercial fisherman wear are really the only totally waterproof footwear.

If it’s waterproof your legs will be wet anyway (sweat will accumulate)

Update: communications have been a bit glitchy but the craft has made a safe landing and is transmitting data.

Was watching NASA administrator Bill Nelson's congratulatory message; can't help wondering if he also recorded a commiseration one looking to the future in case it didn't work...

I'm sure. That was very recorded. Reminds me of Nixon's speech written in the event the moon landing failed. https://www.archives.gov/files/presidential-libraries/events...

Maybe it had an AT&T SIM? ;)

But seriously, it's weird how this really didn't make a lot of news today overall. Did the cellular outage really overshadow this? Times have changes if so. Our idea of "wow!" has been desensitized I guess. Pretty impressive to me!

The JWST is on a similar level of impressive (if not more), and arguably more important than a single moon landing, and the general public doesn't have much interest in that either.

To defend the general public, landing an unmanned craft on the moon just doesn't sound impressive anymore, it's like SpaceX landing their boosters. The first time it's mindblowing, the Nth time, not so much.

EDIT: And for JWST for the average person it's just a new Hubble.

The average person is likely to not even know about Hubble or any space telescopes.

Wow, I'm pleased to hear this. I watched the stream, but by the time I had turned it off there hadn't been any word and things looked pretty bleak.

It's still grim. All the "signals" we have are from the hypeworks. It's fascinating, actually, how basically nobody in the media had the guts to be honest & neutral, and state the obvious fact that things aren't looking _that_ good.

As I was watching it, I was thinking that if I were responsible for planning the scripts, I would have been kicking myself for not recording one for an ambiguous circumstance, or incomplete success. As it was it was a little disjointed.

I didn't know about them. I recently watched the whole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_All_Mankind_(TV_series) and was mesmerized by it - it's alternative reality fiction, where a private company comes to land on Mars!

Yeah, For All Mankind is a great show for people who are excited about this kind of stuff. It's an alternative-history fictional drama exploring "What if" the space race never ended.

Yep. Highly enjoyed its Season 1, but I wished I never watched any further - it feels complete at this point and the later seasons destroy the impression. Kind of like with The Matrix.

Note: some people have an opposite opinion, that the interesting stuff starts at Season 3.

I loved them all - but I can see your point!

Agreed, Season 1 was by far the best. I'm re-watching the whole thing with my spouse and in some ways it's more fun the second time around (surely biased because of the shared experience).

Some shows are like that - I didn't think Star Trek Deep Space Nine was all that hot first time around, appreciated it much more years later on a rewatch (the supporting characters are awesome). Maybe in part it's adjusted expectations ;-).

I wanted to like it, and having some (reasonably-)big-budget visualization made of proposed rockets like Sea Dragon was great. But the (imo) awful dialog made the show unwatchable for me, and they did a lot of scientifically silly stuff like taking the Space Shuttle to the moon.

It looks like it touched down, mission control picking up a faint signal, trying to refine it now.

First successful commercial landing!

The next stage in this project is the ice-drilling PRIME-1 - which might rely on the success of this stage? Details:

> "The [Odyssus] Nova-C Lander is a tall hexagonal cylinder on 6 landing legs. It is capable of carrying 100 to 130 kg of payload to the surface. It uses solar panels to generate 200 W of power on the surface. Propulsion and landing use liquid methane as fuel and liquid oxygen as an oxidizer. The PRIME-1 mission has two primary components, The Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain (TRIDENT) and the Mass Spectrometer observing lunar operations (MSolo). TRIDENT is an augering drill approximately 1 meter long. The drill is able to stop at any depth as commanded from the ground and deposit and deposit its sample on the surface for analysis. MSolo is a commercial off the shelf (COTS) mass spectrometer modified for spaceflight and lunar operations. Total PRIME-1 payload mass is about 40 kg."

https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id...

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?

Maybe star (and moon/earth) tracking and radio signals to earth?

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

But observations need powerful domestic telescopes. If you're NASA, you own and have access to them.

Do you mean optical telescopes? I would have thought they used earth based radar plus star tracking onboard to figure out where they are in orbit, but I don't know.

No, as an American, you own them. NASA just administrates them for you. If you're a space faring private company, you contract out the various parts of the mission. You didn't build a rocket, you hired SpaceX. You didn't build the relay network, you licensed access time. You don't build a space observation platform, you license time to use them.

Which of those, or what else instead, did the specific company in this case do for this specific mission? That is what ethbr1 was asking.

Almost certainly NASA.

If I owned them, I would get to use them. I don’t, so logically I must not.

By this logic, there are huge amounts of land that I also “own” that guys with M16s (or, more accurately, M4s) will keep me from walking on if I try to go there. Half the year I live in southern Nevada, so this distinction has some direct practical consequences in my life.

It’s deceptive. Government property is not owned by citizens, it is under the exclusive control of the state—i.e. not you.

You conveniently left out the part of licensing the time. You can license with the BLM for access to government control land. Ranchers do it all the time. Special events like Burning Man also do it. You just have to contact the correct agency to do it. But of course, it so much easier to make a know it all sarcastic filled internet rant than do anything approaching useful information to a conversation.

Do you not see how that just furthers the parent's point? If I have to license usage of something, I don't actually own it.

I think we have a basic misunderstanding of private vs public ownership. When we all own it, you can't just do whatever you want like build a house, but withe proper permit, you can use it. If it was private, I could never do something with what you owned.

In the case of public ownership, I don't own it though. The entire public does. I'm willing to say "the people own" these telescopes, but that isn't what you originally said. You said "as an American, you own them" which isn't true.

pedants going to pedant

Ownership rights and various kinds of access rights are not identical and often conflated.

For example, if I own a water well, I don’t necessarily have the rights to do whatever I want with it. Some jurisdictions might let me pump out as much water as I want, but even those will punish me for blatantly polluting it (one would hope).

What some people think of as something akin to “total ownership” — completely unlimited access — would be tantamount to putting one’s “rights” above everyone else’s. Even dictators usually have some limits on their power, whether by laws, norms, or geopolitical pressures.

I would say that in your example, the well is really two things: the water table (which you don't own), and the pump you use to draw water (which you do own).

This is a pretty silly pedantic point. Public property is owned and controlled by governments for the benefit of the public. That does not mean each individual member of the public has traditional ownership rights to said property.

> as an American, you own them. NASA just administrates them for you

Across public and private spheres, the word “ownership” loses meaning. (Nobody “owns” NASA or the U.S. government, though they do “belong”to we the people.) That’s why, in ownership disputes between nations and under the law, the operant term is “control.”

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 would be interesting to know.

I'm not aware of any commercial providers for lunar communications.

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

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...

Thanks for these great details. Is there a fee for using the NASA resources (I assume there is, I just don't know how this works)?

Yes, there is a fee. The largest antennas (i.e., the absolutely gigantic 70 meter dishes) can be $5k per hour. Further discussion on StackOverflow [1] and the NASA MOCS guide [2].

[1] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/21005/what-makes-t...

[2] https://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/files/6_NASA_MOCS_2014_10_01_...

You are awesome! Thanks for all the links and info, to an open-ended question.

The process of bootstrapping to Earth-space-parity is fascinating to me.

One thing in the 1960s, when there was no GPS and terrestrial net assumption, but now you're going from everything we've built here to... if you don't bring it, you don't have it.

The accretion of Mars support satellites has also been fascinating.

It's gonna be wild the first time SpaceX sends a Starship to the moon and/or mars to unload a load of starlink satellites into orbit.

The name LunaNet made me think of GPS cubesats and ground transponders that would make precise positioning lunar equipment/missions without the latency of coupling to earth systems. It's not that, it seems. Anyone want to start a location-based service company? ;)

I believe they are part of the recently setup homesteading program similar to what Alaska setup in the 80s. If they can put a stake in the ground they get 20 acres around the stake.

Reassuringly anachronistic to use acres as a unit of measure on the moon.

For historical reasons, a moon acre is approximately 16.7% smaller than an earth acre.

It's an official unit of the only flag on the Moon to date. What else would you suggest?

It’s not the only flag.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220725003858/https://www.space...

m²

Maybe the same units basically everybody has always ever used (in earnest) for space tech (including NASA)?

This reminds me of countries who send pregnant women to antartica to (somehow) strengthen their land claims: https://medium.com/good-to-know/why-11-babies-have-been-born...

Like antartica, I'm sure someone with guns will tell us who really owns the moon as soon as it actually becomes relevant.

It's interesting how this feels like a big deal; when I learned of this yesterday, I almost forgot that there have been almost 30 missions to Mars (which I assume is much harder and more expensive) in the years since the last moon landing.

I'm more excited about the moon. Being that much closer is a big deal. This company is looking to make sending stuff to the moon (not sure about getting stuff back) a reliable & vaguely cost effective thing to do.

There's probably valuable stuff on the moon and even if not, it's learning a load of things about going further afield. Lots of science fiction about the asteroid belt beyond mars.

It is a big deal!

While just landing on the moon is definitely much simpler than a Mars mission, this lander is a part of the Artemis program; it's one of the first steps towards developing the Artemis base camp on the moon.

> which I assume is much harder and more expensive

Manned space missions are significantly more expensive (and complicated) than robotic missions. (Otherwise, we'd be sending a lot more people into space.)

Let's do a little bit of back-of-the-envelope Googling:

From https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-apollo

> The United States spent $25.8 billion on Project Apollo between 1960 and 1973, or approximately $257 billion when adjusted for inflation to 2020 dollars.

From https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-the-mars-expl....

> The Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission cost $1.08 billion. Of that amount, $744 million was spent on spacecraft development and launch; $335.8 million was spent on 15 years of mission operations.

So it looks like "manned" space missions cost at least 100x the cost of sending a robot.

The post you're replying to is comparing robotic missions to Mars vs. the moon.

Mars is orders of magnitude harder to land on because of its atmosphere, stronger gravity, and the need to keep your robot healthy on the long trip over.

Maybe you can come up with a better comparison?

I don't know why they made it so hard to get to the youtube link for the video, which is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-qwhozfYeQ

FYI, they have a subreddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/IntuitiveMachines/

NASA is covering this on twitch right now: https://www.twitch.tv/nasa

It’s interesting to watch this company operate and see just how much better SpaceX is at PR and how internet native their broadcasts annd PR efforts are — they are head and shoulders better than their competitors.

I really am stoked to see more and more space companies setting new milestones. It’s going to be a bright future for humanity if we can continue to expand space exploration and eventually become multiplanetary. It’s awesome to be alive to witness it.

(via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39468115, but no comments there)

> the Odysseus lander will eject the EagleCam camera-equipped CubeSat, which will drop onto the lunar surface near the lander

So the first non-government device to land on moon will be viewed trying to land by a device also non-government (but part of the lander) that lands on the moon first? I guess that evens out.

Now to the problem with YouTube, and I'm sick and tired of reporting this, because by now they should have an automated solution for this, look at this link:

https://www.youtube.com/hashtag/im1

Channels named "SpaceX [LIVE]" [0], "SpaceX" (which is actually @uyenmusic with 148.000 subscribers), and so on.

Most of these channels have no videos except for that single live stream, occasionally inserting QR-codes with crypto-scams. Like the first one I mentioned.

> Huge crypto-giveaway during to the launch!

> During this unique event, you have the opportunity to take a share of 1.000 BTC & 10.000 ETH & 100.000.000 DOGE & 10.000.000 USDT. Have a look at the rules and don't miss out on this. You can only participate once!

And the most interesting thing about this video is that they are using AI to make Elon Musk say that you should scan the QR-code and that you will get the crypto. 100% sounds like him.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toDNnSBzgEU

That livestream [0] looks like a pretty convincing scam to me, with 22k people viewing at the moment. And it indeed sounds like him. The real username is hidden behind the visible SpaceX[Live] name.

does someone have a telescope pointed at the moon so we can have a third, third-party view of this landing?

Where is the live stream?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IarunZ9Ykas

Nice background music - not jarring.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg2ffigGcYM

This is not a hoax.

But won't we soon have a real fake moon landing?

What a world.

Is this the first time for pvt company...?

It is the size of a Tardis

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Wallace and Gromit did it a long time ago.

Just adding the news this was achieved, even if it wasn't a clean landing, gives me a warm fuzzy feeling as a human being of Earth.

50 years have passed and all we get are two crappy photos of the "landing". Hilarious.

This is great, it really proves that the free market can be just as innovative and efficient as the public sector. They managed to get there less than 50 years after the taxpayer funded space guys did. No small feat! Imagine all the things they must've learned along the way!

You do realize this mission is taxpayer funded. Intuitive Machines is getting paid as part of a contract to NASA under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLIPS) program.

https://www.nasa.gov/commercial-lunar-payload-services/

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

No way!! I thought private enterprise didn't need government handouts?

It's poor people and small businesses who don't need government handouts.

TBTF FTW!

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.

Experience is irreproducible. It depends on too many factors, we even don't know the full list of them, and some of them change irreversibly with time passing. You will not be 10 years old anymore. It is not a good reason for a depression, you can experience world now like you couldn't being a 10 year old boy.

Actually one of the absolute best things about having kids, that is not reproducible for no-child lifestyles, is seeing everything for the first time through their eyes.

All the other stuff people say about parenting can be reproduced via service or volunteering or something else. But that experience absolutely is unique.

Magic is real. The world is wild and exciting, and it's all there for that kid. It's amazing to watch and be a part of.

So, while you can never go back to being at 10 year old boy, you absolutely can get a taste of what that's like via adoption or having your own. In my opinion, that is.

Ahh yes, empathy can give us experiences we are unable to get ourselves.

> not reproducible for no-child lifestyles

I see what you did there, heh!

Just here to both support and counter this a bit. Kids are absolutely a great way to see joy in the world again!

... but they don't have to be yours. I've supervised those for my peers, played temporary dad, all of it.

Sure, it's time-boxed, but that may be the goal. Trading seeing "everything" new, for "plenty"

How dare they attempt to defray their costs.

How dare they put an ad on the moon.

We are truly spreading the worst of humanity into the cosmos. Good job it's only us that appear able to witness it.

Defraying costs by using ads is a strawman. If you can't afford to do something, maybe don't do it. If you really, really want to do it, maybe ask yourself if the world genuinely needs what you're doing. If it does, find a way. If the only way you can do it is by selling advertising, you've taken as mis-step.

That's an extreme position to take that rests on the claim that sponsorship/advertising is objectively bad.

Media & journalism have been underpinned by advertising for over a century. Tons of educational and informative services are available to the public for free because of advertising. Sponsorship has built art galleries, hospital wings, research centers, etc.

In this case, there's a relatively innocuous logo on a robotic lander that is 230k miles away on a desolate rock. It's not like this is a billboard in a nature preserve.

Whether advertising is objectively bad isn't necessarily the debate, but at some point it can cross a line. That line might be different for everyone, but most people will have it. You yourself give an example of something you suggest might be unaccaptable to some:

> billboard in a nature preserve

Where's the line? Why shouldn't we put billboards in nature preserves?

> If you can't afford to do something, maybe don't do it.

Clearly they can afford to do what they just did.

Oh, you don't like how they raised money? Good, pay attention to something else, they aren't doing things for your approval.

I would dearly love to "pay attention" somewhere that isn't plastered in advertising.

They didn't do it for approval, but they sure as shit didn't ask for approval either.

And I'd like to see a breakdown of exactly how much the ad revenue contributed to payload delivery.

It's almost as bad as when they put the Castile flag on the Santa Maria!

I get where you're coming from with the AD on the spacecraft. It's gross to see an ad for a clothing company on the moon.

But, NASA is predominately displayed on all of the original moonshot crafts. That's an advertisement for that organization. . .

And, I'm 100% sure ego had nearly everything to do with the original space race. Beating the Russians and what-not. That seems, in hindsight, to be very ego driven?

I think saying "this organization built this craft that went to space" is a bit different than "buy shit from this other company"

The Columbia logo on this craft is both. They're advertising the brand in a very cool and unique way AND they contributed significant heat shield technology to the craft itself.

It's about self-identification not advertisement. And NASA isn't a privately-owned for-profit corporation. It's like putting "US NAVY" on a battleship, except instead it's a vehicle furthering mankind's technological development.

NASA is an organization that represents the collective efforts of Americans (and others!). Columbia clothing is a private business that maximizes profit.

This feels unnecessary cynical. I could understand if the spacecraft said "Drink Ovaltine" or something else just advertising with paid placement, but the brand marks on it are just highlighting the organizations the actually built the thing. I was originally confused/skeptical about Columbia, but they did actually contribute to the design and construction of the lander, even if this press release is a little puffed up: https://investor.columbia.com/news-events/press-releases/det....

Also, you say "It's all just egos and entertainment now." What do you think it was in 1969? Is "beat the Russians" somehow a more noble goal than "sell a product"?

Eventually, spacecraft will look like a NASCAR paint job.

Back when I used to help organized and run a technology-specific usergroup, where we were constantly working corporate sponsors for donations to pay for food/beverages, I joked that on meeting nights I would gladly wear a NASCAR style jumpsuit, emblazoned with every sponsor brand logo/slogan. At least we would be honest shills. Sigh... no one took me up on the offer.

I still think that politicians should wear a jumpsuit with all of their corporate sponsors

Perhaps briefly. Eventually they will look like cargo ships.

What makes you think a cargo ship can't have a NASCAR paint job?

It's not that they can't, it's that they don't.

I wonder what kind of analytics the adtech will bring them, and how invasive to their privacy it will be

The US flag on the early moon landings, was absolutely an advertisement; the whole thing was done as a propaganda riposte to the Soviet Union's Sputnik. Doesn't mean it's not awesome.

There is a meaningful difference between national pride and 2 for 1 at Dominos.

True, for instance no wars have yet been fought over 2 for 1 at Dominos.

Not yet

This is the first step.

2 for 1 at Dominos has also, strangely enough, never protected anyone.

Odd that.

Diseased worldview

In 2001 Pizza Hut actually had its logo on a Russian rocket, and delivered pizza to cosmonauts on ISS as part of a robotic resupply mission.

Did they tip?

That's because you were a child at the time. A child now will most likely have the same sense of awe and wonder you had, not the cynical point of view you've developed over time.

A child now will be totally unaware about that because he will be occupied doomscrolling whatever trends is current now on TikTok.

I’m just glad it’s not something “too on the nose” comedically, like for Coca-Cola or something that makes me think of Wall-E. At least it’s a hiking/adventurey brand and not KFC.

The first Mars colonizers will stick a coca-cola flag in and everyone but few PR people will sigh collectively

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.

We also hit a few golf balls. Give us some credit.

the moon landing rocket said "usa" on the side and had flags. that's the same thing, just a bigger corporation

It's carrying a payload for Columbia, among other things, which makes this type of marking generally called a “sponsor logo” rather than an “advertisement”:

“Besides NASA’s tech and navigation experiments, Intuitive Machines sold space on the lander to Columbia Sportswear to fly its newest insulating jacket fabric; sculptor Jeff Koons for 125 mini moon figurines; and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University for a set of cameras to capture pictures of the descending lander.”

https://apnews.com/article/moon-landing-private-company-intu...

Their desk in the middle of the control room is proof that earth is a flat disk. Surely they would have a spherical desk had the earth been a sphere!

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