The IM-2 lander is beginning its vertical descent where the lander’s Guidance and Navigation Control system flies the lander to a point approximately 98 feet (30 meters) above the designated landing site. Then the lander goes into a vertical descent at about 10 feet-per-second (3-meters-per-second). After that, the lander brakes to a 3-feet-per-second (1-meter-per-second) descent rate […]
The final burn of Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 lunar lander has begun. Powered descent initiation is a main engine firing that will take about 12 minutes. It’s designed to slow the lander’s speed in preparation for final descent moments before touchdown. During this phase, the lander must slow down by about 4,000 miles per hour […]
After launching Feb. 26 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Intuitive Machines’ lander is preparing to land on the Moon at 11:30 a.m. CST at Mons Mouton near the Moon’s South Pole. Watch now on NASA+ or the agency’s website. Aboard the mission are a suite of NASA technology and science payloads on their way […]
After successfully completing descent orbit insertion at 4:33 a.m. CST Thursday, Intuitive Machines flight controllers are gathering data and checking the lander’s landing systems for accuracy ahead of landing on the lunar surface for its IM-2 mission. The updated landing time is 11:30 a.m. CST. As part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative […]
Mission engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California turned off the cosmic ray subsystem experiment aboard Voyager 1 on Feb. 25 and will shut off Voyager 2’s low-energy charged particle instrument on March 24.
Vein scans and muscle stimulation were the primary research activities aboard the International Space Station on Wednesday to learn how to keep crews healthy in space. The Expedition 72 crewmates also continued preparing for an upcoming crew departure while unpacking a cargo craft.
The mission operations team for NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer at Caltech’s IPAC is continuing efforts to re-establish communications with the small satellite. Based on telemetry before the loss of signal last week and ground-based radar data collected March 2, the team believes the spacecraft is spinning slowly in a low-power state. They will continue to monitor …
NASA and SpaceX now are targeting no earlier than Friday, March 7, for the launch of the agency’s SPHEREx and PUNCH missions due to the availability of a launch opportunity on the Western range.
NASA and SpaceX now are targeting no earlier than Friday, March 7, for the launch of the agency’s SPHEREx and PUNCH missions due to the availability of a launch opportunity on the Western range. The launch window opens at 10:09 p.m. EST (7:09 p.m. PST) from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space …
On March 3, Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 mission successfully entered into lunar orbit carrying the next suite of NASA instruments and technology demonstrations one step closer to the Moon. The lander aims to complete 39 lunar orbits before beginning descent to the landing site at Mons Mouton near the Moon’s South Pole region. NASA’s PRIME-1 suite […]
