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The Nova-C commercial lander from the US company Intuitive Machines sent back the first series of very clear images of Earth on Friday. Intuitive Machines said the images were taken immediately after a Space The goal is for Nova-C to successfully land on the moon's surface on February 22.
Last Thursday, the commercial company's lunar lander launched with a one-day delay using a Falcon 9 rocket belonging to billionaire Elon Musk's space company, SpaceX. If the Nova-C rover, nicknamed Odysseus, can successfully land on the moon, it will be the first American lunar landing – albeit unmanned – since the Apollo missions more than fifty years ago and the first commercial lunar landing in Earth's history. World. space travel. So far, only government organizations have succeeded.
Watch Space X's Falcon 9 rocket launch below:
The project is part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS). Through this program, the space agency wants to collect as much knowledge as possible relatively cheaply and efficiently on its way to the Moon by concluding contracts with and collaborating with private companies.
Odysseus is approximately the same size as a traditional British telephone booth, has aluminum legs, weighs about 700 kilograms, and can carry a payload of about 130 kilograms. A large portion of this constitutes research materials for NASA, while the other portion is taken up by commercial corporate projects.
The lunar lander will conduct a search on a crater on the moon's surface. Astronauts could also be sent there in the future. The last time humans walked on the moon was about half a century ago in 1972.
Landing on the moon is technically very difficult, and things often go wrong. This year alone, two planned landings went differently than planned.
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