The Decibel - The Odysseus lunar landing and a new space race

Episode Date: February 27, 2024

For the first time ever, a spacecraft built by a private company has landed on the moon. The robotic lander, named Odysseus, touched down in the south polar region on Thursday. But not before a nerve-wracking communications blackout and an off-kilter landing that have scientists racing against time.What is Odysseus’ purpose? What could this mean for future space projects like NASA’s Artemis missions in 2026? Ivan Semeniuk, The Globe’s science reporter, joins the show to explain the historic feat.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Less than one minute remaining for touchdown. Less than one minute remaining for touchdown. Last week, several days after leaving Earth, the Odysseus spacecraft was set to land on the moon. As the spacecraft was kind of going through the various milestones, you know, kind of in this de-orbit burn, and then going down and getting closer to the surface. Everything seemed to be going smoothly. We've reached the expected time of landing, but now is the process of waiting for comms and we are in standby mode.

Until the moment just before landing when contact with the spacecraft was lost and there was this long kind of nail-biting period of time where nothing was hurt. About 12 minutes went by, which in space landings can feel like an eternity. And at that point you're thinking, it's crashed. It somehow has crashed. But then... All stations, this is Mission Director on IM1. We're evaluating how we can refine that signal and dial in the pointing for our dishes.

What we can confirm without a doubt is our equipment is on the surface of the moon, and we are transmitting. So congratulations, IM team. We'll see how much more we can get from that. I know this was a nail biter, but we are on the surface, and we are transmitting. and welcome to the moon. The landing didn't exactly go as planned, and that will change what Odysseus can do.

But this is still a pretty big deal. The Globe's science reporter, Ivan Semenik, is going to tell us why. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Ivan, great to have you here. Thank you. So, Ivan, this spacecraft, Odysseus, has now landed on the moon, but there have been other landers on the moon, right? So why is this one a big deal? That's right. People have been landing on the moon since the 1960s, you know, first with the Soviet Union landing robots on the moon and then the United States.

And then finally, of course, with the Apollo missions landing people on the moon. So this is this has happened before. And of course, other countries have done so. China has landed multiple times now. India has landed. It's happened before, but it's still not easy. The big difference here, of course, is this is the first private company, a commercial entity, has created this spacecraft as opposed to a national space agency. That's a big difference because what it means is it's sort of bringing the moon, kind of drawing the moon into the envelope of commercial

spaceflight. It's certainly possible to land on the moon, but it's a big lift for a company to do so. And so I think even though there are issues with exactly how this mission landed, prior attempts by companies to land on the moon have ended in failure. So this really was one for the history books. Yeah. So this is this private company, Intuitive Machines, that landed this. And we learned over the weekend that, yes, it was a successful landing, but it is off kilter a little bit. So can you tell me what happened or what we know of what happened? So a couple of things happened on the way down.

The spacecraft, first of all, was meant to land using this laser rangefinder. It's an autonomous event, right? Like to some extent, these landers have to land themselves because they can't be steered down. There's too much of a time delay for that. As they were preparing to land, they realized there's a safety mechanism built in so that the laser doesn't fire in the lab during testing so that, you know, it's a safety feature. That was not disabled prior to putting the system on board the spacecraft and launching it. And it can't be done remotely the way it's currently designed. So someone forgot to take the safety off.

Exactly. Intuitive machines basically said this is on us, that they didn't do this. How they responded to that is rather remarkable, though, I have to say. Once they realized that they weren't going to be able to use that system, there was another system on board, a NASA LIDAR system, which could do a similar job. It was there as a demonstration not to actually be part of the landing. But they very quickly realized, we'll have to use this instead. They had to rewrite the software on the fly, which changed some aspects of the landing. And then it's not clear whether these two things are connected

or entirely separate, but once the lander got down towards the surface, it seems to have had a bit of a sideways motion, even as it was kind of descending vertically. And it looks like perhaps one of its legs caught on a boulder or an obstacle or something happened that once it touched down, it pitched over onto its side. It's a fairly tall structure. The spacecraft stands 4.3 meters high. So once it tipped over, then it was on its side. Now, it stayed alive because it's got these solar panels. The sun comes in at a low angle. This is landing down near the south pole of the moon.

So the sun is very close to the horizon and enough sunlight landing on the solar panels to charge the batteries. And it was able to communicate with Earth. So the lander was on tact, but just on its side. And you said it landed near the south pole of the moon. That's right. So what's the significance? Why did it land there? So the south pole of the moon is an area of high scientific curiosity.

It's because, you know, the moon is normally quite dry. It's obviously airless. There's no water on the moon. Except at the south pole, because the angle of the sun is so low, you could have these craters and low-lying areas where sunlight never quite gets into those dark places. And that means that ice can be stable there because it's never getting direct sunlight. So water vapor that gets trapped in these places can freeze and ice can mix in with the soil. And the water vapor might come from comets, for example. You just imagine billions of years of comets kind of hitting the moon, vaporizing, and some of that water vapor gets trapped in these dark, shadowed areas.

So over time, it appears from indirect evidence that water ice has accumulated in these dark areas, and that is a resource. Obviously, you can take the ice and turn it into water and use it for life support, but also it can be turned into fuel, potentially. Interesting. You can separate the hydrogen and the oxygen in water and use it for fuel. So it's a resource that people want to explore and exploit, potentially, and that has made the South Pole sort of the hotspot in a way for lunar exploration, at least until people have a better idea of what's there. So kind of like a, I don't know, like a gas station on the moon in a way? Possibly, possibly.

And that's part of the objective is to check this out. So in fact, not only are a number of the landers going there, the uncrewed landers, but the first human mission, the first mission that will return people to the moon is also heading for near the south pole not far from where Odysseus landed I'm going to ask too because often when we're looking for water we're looking for signs of life

are they looking for signs of life here? Is that a possibility? This is not a life quest this is really about what does the moon have to offer and having ice would be and not having to carry all the water with you if you were coming from Earth. That would be a big asset. So it sounds like we're focused a little bit more on the South Pole now, but have we usually tried to land near the South Pole? How have we usually done this? This is the most southerly landing site on the moon by far. So one thing that intuitive machines has achieved, not only is the

first commercial landing, but the most southerly landing by anyone on the moon. It's not easy because as you leave the earth, it's, it turns out for dynamical reasons, just for the sheer physics of it, it's much easier to sort of land in the same plane that you're leaving earth from. So if you take off kind of somewhere closer to earth's equator, it's easier to sort of land in the same plane that you're leaving Earth from. So if you take off kind of somewhere closer to Earth's equator, it's easier to land near the moon's equator. You kind of have to bend your path to go up and around the poles of the moon. That usually requires more energy. It's a more complicated effort. So in the Apollo days, certainly the first moon landings were very much, you can sort of see them clustered in a kind of band around the moon's equator, and only later have people started to diverge from that.

So Ivan, what was this spacecraft hopes to use in the future with its own lunar landings, especially the lunar landings that will take people back to the moon. So testing navigation systems, there's like a laser reflector array and other aspects that might be used in future missions, a way of gauging the mass of the spacecraft, like how much propellant is left and so on. So all of these things have to be tested. And there's no, if you're designing something for the moon, for use on the moon, the best way to test it is to actually put it on the moon and see how it works. So that sort of brings it up to a higher level of confidence. There are also some science experiments as well. For example, there's a radio, kind of like a radio dish or radio telescope experiment

where they can study the kind of radioelectric environment around the lunar surface. There's another interesting experiment where it was designed to look at the dust plume that as the lander is coming down, it would be raising dust off the surface. And if you study kind of the way the dust rises in response to the rocket coming down, it actually tells you something about physical characteristics of the surface. This is all useful information because, again, if you're sending people there, you want to know as much as possible about this particular part of the moon where really nothing has landed before. And I understand there's also a Canadian-made telescope as well, right? Yes, this is separate from the NASA experiments. There's another group. It's called the International Lunar Observatory Association. They're actually based in Hawaii. They're looking to test the moon as a sort of platform for doing astronomical

observations of deep space. But the company that built the telescope for them is a Canadian company in Ontario, Canadensis. It's also the same company that's building Canada's first lunar rover, which is still to come. I'm sure we'll talk about that in the future. But anyway, this telescope was another interesting science demonstration experiment on the mission. Okay, so that's what's supposed to happen. But of course, we know that Odysseus is on its side, right? So I guess, what happens to these experiments?

Are they still possible? It may be that some of these experiments are still possible, and some of them are gathering data or we're going through the process of gathering data, which they would do automatically upon landing. There are two challenges here. One, obviously, is that the spacecraft is on its side. So that means some things may not work as planned. In particular, the telescope seems to be on the side. We don't have direct evidence, but there's indirect evidence because of temperature readings and so on that the telescope is actually on the side that's facing down. Oh, no.

So it's not even looking up. I don't think we're going to see the stars through that telescope in this case, although there's still useful information that comes from that experiment just in terms of its operations and so on. But the other problem is the bandwidth of communications. useful information that comes from that experiment, just in terms of its operations and so on. But the other problem is the bandwidth of communications. Because the high gain antenna on the spacecraft is not pointing at Earth, and instead the signal is probably bouncing off the lunar surface, it's coming to Earth very weakly, which means the bandwidth is very low. There's just a very limited amount of data that can be sent back, you know, in a given amount of time. So that means the flight controllers will have to really think carefully about what information the lander sends back before it dies. It appears that it's only expected to last, you know, maybe not past Tuesday of this week.

So by the time this episode airs. By the time you're hearing this, it may already be gone. It's hard to predict exactly what's going to happen. But with whatever time is available, the mission team will have to be very careful about how they prioritize the data that's coming down. And I'm sure they'll prioritize the information that will most benefit future landings. So maybe more of the technical information. Because again, I can't overstate this. This is a huge achievement. It is not easy to do this. It's never been done by a private company before. It's just the first of many. There are other companies planning other missions. They're all watching each other in a fairly cooperative way. And I think we're probably,

as you know, this is the tip of the iceberg, and we're going to see a lot more of these. We'll be back in a minute. So Odysseus was landed by a private company, Intuitive Machines. How involved has the private sphere been in space exploration up until now? This is a fascinating transition. And it's really an extension of something that we saw in the first decade of this century. The previous kind of template for space exploration was that you have a big national space program like a NASA.

And of course, in Canada, we have the Canadian Space Agency. In Europe, you've got the European Space Agency where European countries collaborate and they have sort of a unified space agency. And, you know, China, Russia, and so on. What has changed is that as technology becomes more robust, as electronics improve, as knowledge and designs improve, it's becoming more achievable for private companies to do this. And, you know, around 2006, 2007, there was this interesting moment where NASA decided to open the door to private companies to build rockets to supply the space station. Now, in the past, of course, NASA has employed contractors, you know, Boeing and Lockheed and so on. These are private companies that would build the things that NASA needed. But NASA was always in charge of the mission.

So this was a big paradigm shift where NASA would say, actually, we don't care how you do it. Just we need someone to deliver cargo to the space station, for example. So you build a rocket, you demonstrate that it works, we'll give you some cargo, we'll pay for it, we'll pay for the ride. So that opened the door to SpaceX, for example, and a number of other companies that became private launch systems to low Earth orbit supply, you know, and with NASA sort of providing that incentive. And of course, the benefit from that was that it wasn't just NASA that became the customer, but lots of other companies, lots of other people who want access to space now purchase a launch on a SpaceX rocket. In fact, Odysseus was launched by a SpaceX rocket. So you could sort of see how this bootstraps. So it was the same idea that this NASA program was developed called,

it was called CLPS. And the program was basically to have a number of companies devise methods of getting materials to the moon. So that would be their job, and NASA would pay for the ride. So I guess, Ivan, what does it mean for space exploration that a private company has now done this? I think what it means is it increases the number of pathways to the moon.

Just as we see that SpaceX, Blue Origin, and other companies have increased the number of pathways into low Earth orbit. And that will benefit any number of participants. You can imagine other companies that want to have access to space for some reason, or in this case, to the lunar surface. You can imagine researchers, you know, universities. Suppose you're a university researcher and you have an experiment you'd like to try on the moon. Either you can wait 20 years and hope that your national space agency prioritizes a moon mission, and maybe they choose your experiment and maybe it'll go there. Or you can just say, look, this is a small experiment. You know, maybe for X thousands

of dollars, I can put it on this mission and it'll be delivered to the moon along with a whole bunch of other experiments. So I think it's an accelerant getting people to think about the moon, think about what they might want to do there for commercial or non-commercial purposes, but it's just opening the doorway. Okay. So it might provide more opportunities, but I have to wonder, like, are there, are there concerns about having private companies operating on the moon? I think at this point, people in the space sector would say that it is, that it would benefit everyone to have more development of technology and access.

You know, when people worry about, you know, environment or exploitation, I mean, the moon is not a living world, right? So there aren't environmental issues like that on the moon's surface. I suppose the big question is going to come in the future when there are enough actors and enough interests that there might be competing interests on the moon, you know, just as there might be on the ocean floor or in Antarctica. And people are already looking to the kinds of treaties and other international mechanisms that might try to manage

what happens when you have a lot of different interests, you know, going out to kind of a distant resource. The moon at the moment is a resource for Earth. That's sort of how it's being regarded in this situation. But at this point, it's still very much, well, let's go and see what's there. Yeah. So we're still at an early stage. But I guess, like, since nobody has jurisdiction really over the moon, just going back to the example we were talking about earlier, right? If a company finds lunar ice and starts making rocket fuel and start

selling it, like, I guess they would be allowed to do that. I think there's no restriction on that right now. There is something called the Artemis Accords. So this is something that the United States has developed so that it has partnerships with other countries and other players on the moon. There are moves to try to, I think, kind of develop a framework for how the moon will enter into the sphere of human activity and commerce, just as low Earth orbit has now. But even in low Earth orbit, we know that, you know, China has experimented with killer satellites. Other, you know, there have been other uses of space that people aren't necessarily thrilled

with. But we're at the beginning of this next phase in space exploration. So we'll have to see what happens. So maybe just lastly here, Ivan, if I can get you to look to the future, you know, if things do continue as they are, and we start to see lots of private companies operating on the moon in the future, you know, what might that look like? What would be happening on the moon? What this mission has me thinking about, you know, despite the fact that this lander is not going to last very long, as time goes on, I think we're going to get to a point where there is always something operating on the moon. There may not be people always on the moon.

I mean, right now we have people continuously in space. Thanks to the International Space Station, it's been years and years and years now. We don't even think twice about it. You know, there was a time where that wasn't the case. I think we're moving to a time very soon where there will always be, maybe not humans, but something working on the moon. And there will just be this continuous activity taking place on the moon, gradually exploring and developing that. Ivan, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. Thank you.

That's it for today. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrienne Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.