The launch of Im-1 Nova-C, the lunar mission of the Texan company Intuitive Machines which intends to complete the first descent on the Moon by a private individual, has been postponed until tomorrow morning, 7:05 am Italian time.
The scheduled launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with a Falcon 9 rocket has been postponed by 24 hours due to an anomaly detected during the filling operations of the liquid methane tank.
Im-1 will be the second moon landing attempt in a few months by an American company, after the failure of Astrobotic's Peregrine in January due to a fuel leak, and aims to land a 675-meter lander on the Moon. kilo called Odysseus near the lunar south pole, very far from where the Japanese Slim mission landed a few weeks ago and managed to touch the ground intact but ended up upside down.
Of the last 11 moon landing attempts, only 4 have succeeded, including the Indian mission Chandrayaan-3 in 2023 and the Chinese Chang'e 5 in 2020, demonstrating the complexity, exceeding expectations, of returning to the Moon.
If the Im-1 mission were to succeed, it would be the first by a private individual and would mark the return of the USA after the last Apollo mission in 1972. Approximately 4.3 meters high, the Odysseus lander aims to land around 300 kilometers from the south pole lunar, near a crater called Malapert A, near the descent sites already identified for the Artemis missions, the ambitious international program in which Italy and Europe also participate which aims to bring man back to the Moon and to the creation of a stable outpost around our satellite.
Im-1 will take less than 10 days to reach the Moon and shortly before landing on the ground the Odysseus lander will release a small video camera which will film the final stages of the descent.
On board the lander there are a total of 6 scientific instruments made by NASA and 6 other loads including a work by the well-known artist Jeff Koons dedicated to the phases of the moon.
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