Después de 50 años desde que el ser humano dejó de ir a la Luna, una nave espacial ha hecho historia tras posarse en la superficie lunar el pasado 22 de febrero. Odysseus, es el módulo de aterrizaje lunar de clase Nova-C de la empresa norteamericana Intuitive Machines, la primera empresa privada que alcanza este hito. El lanzamiento se produjo el 15 de febrero desde Florida, a bordo de un cohete Falcon 9.
However, not everything worked flawlessly. A problem with the navigation equipment caused a faster descent than what was planned and the spacecraft ended up in an unexpected position, since a leg broke off due to the impact. However, the equipment and payloads have successfully sent information to Earth.
El alunizaje se produjo en el polo sur, una región de perpetua oscuridad de gran interés, después de detectarse agua helada”
The Moon landing took place in the south pole, a region shrouded in perpetual darkness that is of great interest since frozen water was detected there. This ice could be used in the future by astronauts as drinking water, for oxygen and even as fuel for space vehicles.
The Nove-C spacecraft carried 12 payloads: six belonging to NASA (for radio observations of the surface, a navigation Doppler Lidar for the precise velocity and range sensing, stereo cameras for studying the surface of the lunar plume, a navigation demonstrator and a radiofrequency mass gauge) and six commercial (from Columbia Sportswear, who sent the OmniHeat Infinity technology to protect the module from the extreme temperatures of outer space; EmbryRiddle with EagleCam, a camera system to capture the first-ever third-person image of a spacecraft performing an extraterrestrial landing; sculptor Jeff Koons provided 125 stainless steel miniatures of the lunar phases; the ILO-X instruments aimed at capturing some of the first images of the center of the Milky Way; Lunaprise with information about Earth, such as text messages and images; and Lonestar, whose mission is to send datacenters with increasing capacity to the Moon to satisfy the needs of its clients).
Despite this troubled mission and other private missions which unsuccessfully attempted to land on the Moon (by Japan, Israel and the United States), Odysseus marks the beginning of a future lunar economy and a cislunar market.
