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Intuitive Machines’ first lunar lander formally misplaced energy right this moment after spending seven days on the moon. The lander made historical past for being the primary American {hardware} to succeed in the lunar floor since 1972 and the primary privately constructed spacecraft to land on the moon. However the lander, referred to as Odysseus, will likely be remembered for one more motive: its propulsion system.
That propulsion system, which makes use of a mix of cryogenic liquid oxygen and liquid methane, may unlock new capabilities in house and de-risk future missions by different business suppliers.
Earlier than Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 mission, no lander had ever used this mixture of propellants. In the event that they sound acquainted, it’s as a result of they’re utilized in high-performance rocket engines, like SpaceX’s Raptor, Blue Origin’s BE-4 and Relativity Area’s Aeon R.
However landers — and most spacecraft right this moment — use “house storable” or hypergolic propellants, like hydrazine or nitrogen tetroxide, which might be passively saved however are extremely poisonous. In distinction, “cryogens” are extra environment friendly, larger power and significantly much less harmful, however they should be actively cooled to very, very low temperatures.
This presents some distinctive challenges. As a result of the fuels should be stored so chilly, they will solely be saved previous to lift-off for a really quick period of time. To get round this difficulty, Intuitive Machines and SpaceX began fueling the Nova-C class lander’s VR900 engine (which was constructed by IM) simply three hours earlier than lift-off, when the rocket was on the launch pad and the spacecraft was already contained in the payload fairing. That is something however typical.
It’s so out-of-the-ordinary that SpaceX needed to develop totally new capabilities to gas the lander, Invoice Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s VP of construct and flight reliability, stated throughout a press convention on Feb. 13. That included modifying the launch pad, the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket, and including an adapter to entry the payload fairing when it was already mated to the automobile.
The 2 firms carried out two moist costume rehearsals previous to launch; points with propellant loading resulted within the first launch try being pushed by a day, to Feb. 15. After the profitable launch, Intuitive Machines’ additionally bumped into a short difficulty chilling the liquid oxygen feed line, which took longer than anticipated. As soon as the propellant was sufficiently cooled, flight controllers efficiently fired the engine in house for the primary time the next day.
As a result of the corporate was utilizing liquid oxygen and liquid methane, that are extremely environment friendly, they have been capable of take a extra direct trajectory to the moon. The spacecraft solely needed to transit the Van Allen belt, a high-radiation zone across the Earth, as soon as, which lowered the spacecraft’s publicity to damaging high-energy particles.
Two VR900 engines can even be used on Intuitive Machines’ a lot bigger “Nova-D” spacecraft, to ship 500-750 kilograms of payload to the moon. (The Nova-C lander has a payload capability of 100 kilograms.)
The Nova-C and Nova-D landers will likely be removed from the final spacecraft to make use of cryogenic propellants in house. Impulse Area’s high-energy kick stage, Helios, will use cryogens to ship payloads on to geostationary orbit, CEO Tom Mueller defined in an interview from January.
“Folks have talked about doing large kick phases with hypergols earlier than, and I simply assume, you’re speaking tons of propellant and the worth and the price of security are simply exorbitant,” he stated. “So utilizing very low-cost, very high-energy propellants like liquid oxygen and liquid methane is type of like a no brainer.”
One of many six NASA science and analysis payloads that Odysseus carried to the floor additionally instantly leveraged the cryogenic propulsion system. The Radio Frequency Mass Gauge assertion from the company’s Glenn Analysis Heart makes use of radio wave and antenna to measure how a lot propellant is offered within the engine’s tanks. It’s expertise that could possibly be important for measuring spacecraft gas ranges throughout long-duration house missions, particularly as a result of “slosh” could make measuring liquids in microgravity a problem.
This difficulty is of particular significance to NASA as a result of the company’s Artemis missions to return people to the lunar floor is determined by spacecraft that use cryogenic propellants — mainly SpaceX’s Starship Human Touchdown System and Blue Origins’ Blue Moon. These missions would require transferring massive quantities of cryogenic fluids from on-orbit depots to the spacecraft; whereas these fluids will should be on orbit for a lot longer than Odysseus was in transit to the moon, the IM-1 mission continues to be squarely kicking down the door for cryogenic use in house.
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