Modern age The commercial exploration of the moon is above us, and one of the most exhilarating missions is soon fired – one loaded with rover, drill, and even a space ship hopper, which will try to “jump” to a permanently dim moon crater to look for ice.
. IM-2 missionFrom the Intuitive Machines Texas, it is to be launched on the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with Cape Canaveral, Florida on Wednesday, February 26. Lander, called Athena and the size of the car, is partly financed by NASA, as a USMIA agency, the US is trying to create New lunar economy This can support the upcoming planned human missions on the moon.
“NASA and the space industry create a new business, obtaining science and loads to the surface of the moon,” says Laura Forczyk, founder of a consulting company based in Georgia Astralcal. “These unrestricted missions prepare us to send people.”
IM-2 is financed from the NASA program called Commercial Lunar Board Services or CLPS, which began in 2018 as part of the first Trump administration. The goal was to transfer money to private companies for the construction of landing lands on a journey to the moon, transferring NASA instruments and other devices to the moon surface, ahead of the planned return of people in this decade in the Artemis program. Until $ 2.6 billion In the case of financing, it was allocated until 2028, and intuitive machines receive $ 47 million for this mission.
Until now, the CLPS program had mixed results. The first mission, Peregrine Lander built by Astrobotic based in Pennsylvania, suffered a fuel leak and He abandoned the attempt to land In January 2024, another CLPS mission contained the first intuitive machinery, IM-1, which He landed on the side. “We managed to recover the data, but we do not want to end this mission on our side,” says Trent Martin, senior vice president for space systems at Intuitive Machines.
IM-2 will join another CLPS mission on the moon that has already started, Blue Ghost Lander with Firefly of Texas, which is to try to land at the beginning of March. Blue Ghost attacks the region in the northern moon hemisphere, a sea of peace, near the place where the Apollo 11 mission landed in 1969. IM-2, which will try to land later in March, attacks the poles of the southern moon, a region from the region about the region about the region about the region. Probably more scientific interest.
Scientists believe that there may be ice on the moon columns, especially in permanently shaded regionsor PSR. These are craters near the columns, which because of the silt of the moon towards the sun never receive sunlight on their guts. Temperatures on the moon surface can range between -150 and 120 degrees Celsius (-250 and 250 degrees Fahrenheit), because it changes from night to day during the moon day (which is more or less the same length as a month on earth). However, in PSRS, temperatures never grow above -170 degrees Celsius.