the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, Fed Chair Jerome Powell may still be navigating a soft landing, but over on the moon, it’s already a reality.
Last night, Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander achieved a historic milestone as the first US spacecraft to touch down on the lunar surface since Apollo 17 in 1972. This groundbreaking event represents a significant advancement in lunar exploration, private space endeavors, and the realization of futuristic aspirations like Zenon: Z3.
Following the resolution of a last-minute navigation glitch by ground teams, the Odysseus lander, launched aboard a SpaceX rocket, successfully landed in the southern pole region of the moon around 6:30 pm ET on Thursday. Now, it embarks on a mission to investigate the presence of water in the moon’s craters.
While NASA remains committed to its Artemis program aimed at returning humans to the lunar surface, budget constraints have led the agency to embrace collaboration with the private sector through initiatives like the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS). Under this program, NASA partners with private companies, enabling the deployment of data-collecting instruments to the moon via private spacecraft at a fraction of the cost compared to traditional NASA-led missions.
Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus mission, funded by NASA at $118 million, exemplifies this cost-effective approach, delivering six cutting-edge research instruments to the lunar surface. Thomas Zurbuchen, a key figure in the CLPS program, estimates that a similar mission led solely by NASA could cost up to half a billion to a billion dollars.
The trend toward more affordable missions, however, comes with an increased risk of failure. Last month, the Peregrine lander from Astrobotic Technology, another CLPS participant, encountered challenges and failed to reach the moon following a fuel leak. Despite setbacks, the pursuit of lunar exploration continues to drive innovation and collaboration in the aerospace industry.
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Photos from a TV set in Nevada.
Stop being a conspiratard. This is a first great step to putting a person on the moon.
Make it really great and send creepy Joe and Kamala!
Seventwentysixtynine
And jet fuel melted the towers from top down.
I don’t know who told more jokes in Danang, Bob or Neil.
What will all the moon landing deniers do when Marriott opens a Ritz on the moon? It also might be difficult for the flat earth people (Kyrie)
“I’d go to the moon in a nanosecond. The problem is we don’t have the technology to do that anymore. We used to, but we destroyed that technology and it’s a painful process to build it back up again.”
– Donald R. Petitt, NASA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16MMZJlp_0Y
Hardware and data responsible for arguably the greatest feat in all of human history … simply destroyed. Data tapes, not protected, not whisked away to the Smithsonian to sit next to the shawl Queen Victoria gave to Harriet Tubman, but recorded over because fiscally embattled NASA was forced to cut corners.
Someone is lying about something. Either the landing story is as false as the Dutch National Museum’s prized moon rock that turned out to be a piece of petrified wood (and they all just laugh about it and say ‘how did that happen?’) or we went and they’re lying about not be able to reproduce and improve upon what amounts to ancient technology by today’s metrics.