Intuitive machines are aiming on moon landing today: Watch them now

Commercial moon missions with NASA compounds are currently the last scream. Firefly Aerospace put the moon landing of his Blue Ghost mission on March 2. With their IM-2 mission, intuitive machines try a similar success on Thursday morning, and you can now follow live.

How to watch the IM 2 landing

NASA's Live -Landing reporting is broadcast on her free NASA Plus Streaming Service and started at 8:30 a.m. PT, about an hour before the touchdown. NASA Plus is available via the website or the NASA app. The program will also be on YouTube.

A press conference after landing is planned for 1 p.m. PT.

What is im-2?

The Nova-C moonlander from intuitive machines, the nickname Athena, is wearing a number of science instruments and robots, including a bouncy drone, several small rover and a NASA hole, which is intended to dig 3 feet below the surface. The Lander freight includes both NASA and commercial payloads.

The mission is part of the Commercial Lunar Payoad Services program of NASA, an attempt by the space agency to use private companies to send Lander and Rovers to the moon. The larger goals of the NASA through the Artemis Moon program are to return astronauts to the surface of the moon and to establish a long-term human presence there. IM-2 is in the service of this vision.

“The lander bears NASA technology, which measures the potential presence of resources from moon floor, which could be extracted and used by future explorers to produce fuel or breathable oxygen,” said the space agency in an update on Tuesday.

When does the IM-2 moon land?

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Athena's trips started on February 26 with a start on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida. Intuitive machines are aimed at landing the mission on Thursday for 9:32 a.m. The landing site is located near the southern pole of the moon, a first -class NASA target region for future human explorations.

The timing was partially dictated by the availability of sunlight on the moon surface. The Athena Lander uses solar power. Intuitive machines expect the land to operate for about 10 days.

With is to the moon to stay

There is another way to deal with the landing and mission festivals. The XFinity service from ComCast and Media Lab have come together for real-time reporting. The MIT is involved with the moon outpost of the IM-2 mission mobile autonomous prospection platform Rover. Mapp is designed in such a way that you navigate with sensors and visual information on robust terrain.

Mits to the Moon to Stay Program offers educational resources and will provide a live stream of landing together with other key events from the mission. Pay attention to a later live feed with the mapp rover and photos and videos from the moon surface.

Xfinity X1 customers can access the mission resources and live streams by saying “to the moon” about their voice remote controls.

Why IM-2 is important

Occupation world space missions usually attract a lot of attention. IM-2 may have no one on board, but it is worth pursuing fascinating science. The planetary scientist Phil Metzger, research professor at the University of Central Florida, emphasizes the ice breakdown of Mission 1.

Prime-1 aims to measure the ice in the bottom of the moon, and that's a big deal.

“This ice contains a recording of the history of the inner solar system and can help us understand how water and carbon were delivered to the earth's monitoring system in a habitable planet,” Metzger told CNET. “This is crucial for understanding how many other planets can support life in galaxy. So it helps to answer the question:” Are we alone in the cosmos? “” You can't become more profound.

NASA hopes that Prime-1 researchers will help to understand water availability. Water is difficult and expensive to transport through space, so that future human expeditions want to use what is already on the moon.

Landing on the moon is difficult

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Many missions have tried to land successfully on the moon. The Russia's Luna-25 mission fell into the moon in 2023. Israel's bershoet mission and India's Chandrayaan-2 Vikram Lander fell off. “Lunar Landers are challenging, not only because the lunar environment is so hard and exotic, but that we are part of the Mäler with reading as butchers.

It is much more difficult to land on the moon than on earth. “The moon has a big enough gravity to make it difficult to land quietly, but not an atmosphere to slow down a country,” says Josh Colwell, deputy dean of the College of Sciences at the University of Central Florida. “The surface is very rough in all spatial standards, so tilting a landing is a real risk.”

It's not just about having good landing hardware. The software and systems on board have to analyze the surface to lead the lander to a safe place.

Moon landings are exciting, partly due to the dangers that the machines have to navigate to ensure a safe touchdown.

You may be wondering what happened to the IM-1 mission. In 2024, intuitive machines delivered its Odysseus -Lander to the moon, but not everything went fine. The lander made it to the surface, but landed on the side and used his science work. The company trudges for a gentle, upright landing for IM-2.