SpaceX F9 - IM-1 Nova-C Lander - LC-39A - Includes Post Launch Discussion

[Grendal]

Launch Date: February 15
Launch Window: 1:05AM EST (10:05PM PST on the 14th, 06:05 UTC)
Launch site: LC-39A, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS), Florida
Core Booster Recovery: RTLS - LZ-1
Booster: B1060.18
Fairings: Reused
Mass: 1931 kg +100 kg (5 sponsored payloads)
Orbit: TLI
Yearly Launch Number: 15

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the IM-1 mission with the Nova-C lander (Odysseus) built and owned by Intuitive Machines. The IM-1 mission will attempt to deliver a suite of science payloads to the surface of the moon for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. The LC-39A's transporter erector is modified to fuel liquid oxygen and liquid methane onto the lander alongside Falcon 9 fueling operations, shortly before liftoff.

Intuitive Machines Nova-C - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[scaesare]

Interesting...

The LC-39A's transporter erector is modified to fuel liquid oxygen and liquid methane onto the lander alongside Falcon 9 fueling operations, shortly before liftoff.

 

[ecarfan]

From the Wikipedia page:

During the final landing descent the EagleCam CubeSat camera will be ejected from the lander just before touchdown at approximately 30 meters above the lunar surface. Once ejected, the EagleCam will land on the lunar surface somewhere near the Odysseus lander. From the surface the EagleCam will attempt to capture the first third-person images of a lunar landing.[41] The EagleCam will utilize a Wi-Fi connection with the Odysseus lander to relay its images back to Earth.[36]

If that works it will be super cool!

 

[ecarfan]

The Nova-C before it was enclosed in the Falcon fairing.

 

[Grendal]

Look at all that extra room in the fairings... No doubt it would be extra cost but I'd love to see a bigger lander doing more things.

It would be nice if NASA utilized the incredible engineering team at SpaceX to do some deep space probes and landers. I'm sure they could keep the costs down like they do for rocketry.

 

[JB47394]

It would be nice if NASA utilized the incredible engineering team at SpaceX to do some deep space probes and landers. I'm sure they could keep the costs down like they do for rocketry.

It is my hope that Starship will allow many more science missions to be sent out around the solar system because of the lower cost per kg. If the volume of missions is there, then companies can start to build standard components for those missions. The components won't be as light or compact as the bespoke systems being built today, but Starship's lower cost per kg should absorb that. So instead of mounting four tools on one arm, the standard technique may be to have four arms. Or an arm with swappable and standard end effectors that come from a standard carousel. Once that approach is optimized, that would be a great standard part of our rovers.

Until somebody comes up with a better system due to competition in the rover and probe component industry.

Having standard components should hugely accelerate development of these sorts of vehicles, snowballing into a real bonanza of exploration. It should also provide a simple model for how to move forward with additional hardware for other tasks, like building colonies and so on.

It'll be a slog because all the entrenched space science people think in terms of bespoke hardware. But the younger crowd will latch onto the idea.

 

[Grendal]

 

[bxr140]

Look at all that extra room in the fairings... No doubt it would be extra cost but I'd love to see a bigger lander doing more things.

FWIW the fairing is not THAT much bigger than NOVA. NOVA has a reasonably wide footprint from the static landing legs (vs deployable, a la LEM) and as such makes a good go at filling the F9 fairing diameter. The main body obviously is much smaller, but still it's a well massed vehicle for beyond-earth--It's probably pushing the limits of RTLS at 2T to TLI. ASDS is something like 3-3.5T, for reference (it depends a bit on how one defines TLI).

It would be nice if NASA utilized the incredible engineering team at SpaceX to do some deep space probes and landers. I'm sure they could keep the costs down like they do for rocketry.

It's an interesting thought experiment for sure. Definitely we can all get on board with MOAR SCIENCE IN SPACE!!!1!11!!, but I suspect that the 'fail fast and iterate' mantra SX has applied to F9 and Starlink and Starship would not play well with externally funded science missions. The price point needs to be REALLY favorable for someone to gamble their life's work deep space sciencey gizmo on a "we'll see if it works this time" mission from SX.

I also suspect that, because there's little to no money in science (both in revenue and profit), Elon would very much reject the distraction that kind of work would bring to the core SX charter. As an example here, for years everyone and their mothers have wanted to use a starlink platform to host their LEO gizmos; for years SX has told anyone coming with onesie-twosie concepts to pound sand. Elon doesn't want his minions to talk to you if you're not bringing B's or at least many many hundreds of M's, because that level of cashflow can materially help the core charter.

It's reasonable to assume that eventually SX will start landing on the moon and then Mars, ostensibly with something that probably looks something like the Starship of today. Similar to how SX took the relatively mature F9 product and introduced (more or less) commodity level launch services in Rideshare/Transporter/Bandwagon, its probably reasonable to assume that once there's a relatively mature SS landing product SX will start to offer commodity level rides.

 

[Cosmacelf]

"Standing down from tonight’s attempt due to off-nominal methane temperatures prior to stepping into methane load. Now targeting Thursday, February 15 at 1:05 a.m. ET for Falcon 9's launch of the @Int_Machines IM-1 mission from Florida "

 

[ecarfan]

So it’s a GSE issue?

 

[JB47394]

So it’s a GSE issue?

Which is not much of a surprise. They've never loaded propellant on a payload while on the pad, and working with LCH4 for a Falcon 9 is all new. I assume they're tied into the Starship GSE, but there are clearly additional lines, valves, seals and such to route it to the Falcon 9 payload.

 

[ecarfan]

Fueling spacecraft while it’s on a rocket? “Not trivial,” SpaceX official says. Ars Technica report:

The company had to modify the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket to add propellants onto the Nova C lander at the launch pad shortly before liftoff. SpaceX and Intuitive Machines completed two tests of this new procedure over the weekend. It's a complex process, and during the countdown, SpaceX actually controls six valves on the lunar lander to ensure the integrity of the fueling process. Despite the tests, a non-nominal methane temperature reading observed late Tuesday night scrubbed the first launch attempt a couple of hours before the planned liftoff early Wednesday.

Now I get it; the issue was fueling the payload, not the Falcon. This is something that I assume SpaceX has never done before.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Nice to see NASA funding these commercial lunar programs. Makes sense. When Congress doesn't meddle, NASA does amazing work.

 

[Grendal]

2nd success of the day.

 

[ICUDoc]

Great coverage
1. were they new cameras? Seems brighter / sharper / more colourful to me
2. wow-scene at almost exactly 1 hour into the NSF coverage: the initial decel burn of the booster stops while on-camera (ground view) and you get a sense of just how insanely fast it is travelling even AFTER the burn

 

[HVM]

Bonus points for Flat Earth™ Table ; P

 

[ecarfan]

Even though I of course knew that the payload has landing legs, seeing them visible just after fairing separation was still slightly surprising since after hundreds of Falcon missions this was the first time that we saw legs on a payload against the blackness of space.

I thought the view of the IM-1 control screen was pretty cool.

This was beautiful.

 

[JB47394]

I got a chuckle out of the Intuitive Machines ground team communication loop. The woman on Spacecraft Communications doesn't use those crisp replies that we've come to expect from a shared comms loop. Instead, she calmly and slowly describes what she's seeing, and in a bit of detail. There's no attempt at punctuating that this has happened or that has happened. She also uses that rising tone at the end of each statement, which is again in strong contrast to a NASA-style call.

I get a similar chuckle from the countdown from SpaceX as well. The guy counts down ten nine eight seven six five four three two one.

It'll eventually all end up with "Dude, the ASRC is totally off-nominal. Those VRMs need to reset to 0.4. Am I right? Heh." In surfer-dude-speak, of course. No more NASA ex-military guys acting like machines. Now it's all personable civilians.

Intuitive Machines will apparently fire up the main engine at about 7 PM eastern (the "commissioning maneuver"). Here's hoping that it goes off successfully. It would be nice to be visiting the Moon again, and it'll also be nice to see a methalox engine taking us there.

 

[ecarfan]

She also uses that rising tone at the end of each statement, which is again in strong contrast to a NASA-style call.

Yes, that’s a millennial generation thing. Always sounds odd to me. Does every sentence have to sound like it’s a question even though it’s not?

The guy counts down ten nine eight seven six five four three two one.

He doesn’t know about the off beat.

 

[JB47394]

Yes, that’s a millennial generation thing.

Off topic, but I had to look it up. I'm aware that it's becoming more common, but thankfully nobody in my world does it. It's called upspeak or uptalk, and it described on Wikipedia as a "high rising terminal". Valley girl speak is often referenced when talking about origins. So I blame Frank Zappa.

It has been said that if you use the HRT technique, there is reduced tendency to be interrupted because people assume that you have more to say. For someone who tends to not make clear, definitive statements and needs to express things with multiple sentences, I can see how this would become a habit. It certainly matches up with the speaking style of the Intuitive Machines Spacecraft Communications controller.