Less than two hours before Wednesday’s liftoff time, the upcoming launch of a robotic lunar lander built by Houston-based aerospace company Intuitive Machines was called off and postponed for at least one day. The mission, dubbed IM-1, would have marked the first privately owned moon landing since NASA’s last Apollo flight 50 years ago.
However, the launch team was forced to scrub the effort because of “off-nominal methane temperatures before stepping into methane load,” SpaceX, the private rocket and satellite company founded by billionaire Elon Musk, said on social media platform X. It is unclear what caused the anomalies. Still, a delay will give the team more time to troubleshoot.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that will launch IM-1 was scheduled to blast off from Kennedy Space Center’s Pad 39A on Wednesday morning before 1 a.m. The lander, named Odysseus, is expected to fly into the shadow of the lunar south pole to conduct a six-week study of the lunar surface. If successful, the landing will mark a significant milestone in American space exploration and provide an essential test of NASA’s strategy to use commercial companies to deliver science to the lunar surface as part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.
The launch was initially set to be the third by a private company under this contract. The previous mission, operated by Pittsburg-based Astrobotic Technology, suffered a propulsion system failure shortly after takeoff on Jan. 8. It was the first such failure by a private company and the third such issue in less than a year for US space companies trying to win the race to be the first to land astronauts on the Moon.
Intuitive Machines said it will now attempt to launch the lander in a multi-day window that opens Feb. 14. The company said A successful launch within that window will set up a landing on Feb. 22. The lander will carry five science experiments for NASA and four commercial payloads, including sculptures from the artist Jeff Koons.
A postponement of this kind can be a frustrating annoyance for rocket lovers. But it could also help prevent a more severe problem with the Falcon 9, whose mechanical problems have plagued it since it began flying in 2017. The problem has been with the first-stage booster, known as the Falcon 9 Block 5, and it is undergoing repairs.
SpaceX has a busy schedule this week, with its Starlink 6-34 satellite set for a Thursday launch from the same pad and a NASA Psyche asteroid probe slated to blast off on Tuesday night. The latter will fly atop a triple-barreled Falcon Heavy from Kennedy Space Center’s historic Pad 39A. Those missions will be the first of many tests of SpaceX’s new rocket to support long-duration missions to Mars and beyond, its Starship program. The company now focuses on testing the system’s ability to re-use the rocket and booster.
