First Private Spacecraft After Apollo

 In a historic lunar completes, the first private spacecraft to land successfully on the Moon touched down on Feb 22. The spacecraft named Odysseus and built by Intuitive Machines in Houston, Texas.

The IM-1 Nova-C class lander has launched on SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and successfully commissioned in space by establishing a stable attitude, solar charging and radio communications.

Lunar lander continues to be in excellent health, in stable orientation and remain on schedule for a lunar landing opportunity on the afternoon of Feb 22. Allocated a Commission Maneuver (CM) and 3 trajectory correction maneuver to position for Lunar Orbit Insertion. This approach provided flexibility in the mission engine burn schedule to allow for learning as operate the lander in vacuum of space.

The first ever in space ignition of liquid CH4 and liquid O2, as we see the earth based test data against the data we have accumulated in space. The space performance demonstrated that it takes longer to chill the liquid O2 feed line than the earth based testing.

After understanding the in space liquid O2 feed line requirements, then adjusted and uploaded the CM burn preparation time line and increased the onboard event sequence timer.

Flight controller successfully fired the first liquid CH4 and liquid O2 engine in space, this engine firing included a full thrust mainstage engine burn and throttle down profile necessary to land on the Moon.

Over the 8hrs, flight controllers will analyze the engine burn data collected from over 270,000 km away from earth, that is critical technologies required to land softly on the surface of the Moon.

Flight controller are preparing planned trajectory correction maneuvers to prepare the lander for orbit insertion. Propulsion ratios, mass flow rate, and temperature were predicted.

Now TCM fired at 1400 CST for 8 sec, and it is final maneuver before Lander Orbit Insertion(LOI).

Craft is approximately 68,000km from Moon. Schedule of 408 sec main engine lunar orbit insertion burn and is currently in a 92 km circular lunar orbit. From initials data indicates the 800 m/s burn was completed within 2 m/s accuracy.

Flight controllers choose to exercise an addition orbit before the IM-1 Mission landing sequence, the new anticipated landing time is 1724 CST. In the hours craft produced some nail biting moments, such as malfunctioning of laser rangefinders that were supposed to help guide the craft automatically, mission engineers upload the software patch to enable it to use a secondary laser provided by NASA instant.

Touch down.