Moonshot to economic growth: Odysseus lander sets stage for lunar economy

AUSTIN (KXAN) – For the first time in fifty years, Americans are returning to the moon.

At 4:30 p.m. (CT) Thursday, a commercially operated lunar lander named Odysseus will step upon the lunar shore. With the completion of this mission, a new economy could spring forth, one that will have a direct impact on Central Texas.

“It's going to help economically for jobs, for our supply chain, for these companies that are now in the space game,” said Angela Melito, Program Executive with NASA’s Exploration Science Strategies and Integration Office.

According to Melito, the Odysseus mission will help pave the way for future commercial spaceflight.

“That's going to open the door for a lot more other types of partnerships with the commercial companies that want to go to the lunar surface and then start that lunar economy," Melito said.

One of those companies is based here in the Austin area. Firefly Aerospace is an end-to-end space delivery service, essentially space truckers. The company is scheduled to launch the third lunar mission in partnership with NASA.

Odysseus' role on the moon

Each mission in partnership will carry scientific instruments to the moon that will assist in NASA’s Artemis missions. On the Odysseus mission, NASA has six instruments that will prepare the administration for its upcoming trip.

“We have a lunar retroreflector,” Melito said. “We have a navigation Doppler LIDAR that uses LIDAR during the landing to look for precision landing using that LIDAR for precision and accuracy.”

Odysseus was built and operated by Houston company Intuitive Machines. It will land close to the moon’s south pole.

This mission and the next several commercial lunar landings won’t be long-term. Odysseus will last seven Earth days. “ A lunar day can last anywhere between 12 and 14 Earth days,” Melito said. “After that, you go into lunar night, and it gets so cold that your spacecraft or lander, your equipment won't survive unless you have some sort of survive-the-night technology.”

Melito said this tech wasn’t required on these early missions because they are meant to lay the groundwork for future missions. They are not meant to last.

Lunar lander challenges

There have been several missions to the moon in recent years, with few successes. “We have 1/6 Gravity, we have no atmosphere. It's not like Mars, where you could deploy a parachute and come in,” Melito said.

Since this is the first lunar landing since 1972, Melito said they face new challenges, including shifts in technology. Previous missions were all human-operated, while these are all controlled remotely.

“You're going to see a lot of challenges, and you're going to see a lot of innovate innovation, and it's going to show how these commercial companies can overcome these challenges and be successful,” Melito said.