Following its launch from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida last week, Intuitive Machines is gearing up to become the first private company ever to land on the Moon.
Touchdown for the Nova-C lander named Odysseus – affectionately nicknamed 'Odie' – is scheduled for 5:30pm ET (10:30pm GMT) and, all going well, will be the first time an American-led mission has been to the Moon since the end of the Apollo missions more than 50 years ago.
Although the mission is being led by a private company, it falls under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, a part of the Artemis programme that seeks to return humans to the Moon by the end of this decade.
Since NASA's Apollo 11 landing in 1969, the former Soviet Union, China, India and Japan have all successfully put equipment on the lunar surface.
But today's 'space race' isn’t just different because more countries are involved; the private sector now has a front-and-centre role. For the first time, if an individual or company has the money and fancies putting something on the Moon, they can.
So, while there are all important NASA experiments onboard today’s mission – six experiments in total will collect vital data for NASA’s manned Artemis missions later this decade – there’s finally room for some slightly more, well, intriguing additions.
1. Puffer jackets
Okay, they’re not sending an actual puffer jacket to the Moon, but they are sending some coat lining up there.
Outdoor clothing company Columbia Sportswear supposedly developed its Omni-Heat Infinity jacket lining, designed to keep explorers warm in harsh environments, with NASA’s gold space blankets in mind. Now, they’re putting the lining through its paces onboard Odie.
Temperatures during the mission are expected to range from a chilly -133°C to a toasty +121°C, and equipment on the lander needs protection from both ends of the extreme.
Columbia’s material will be used as panel coverings to provide some of this protection.
2. A photo for the 'gram
Back in 2019, Intuitive Machines’ CEO Steve Altemus set some students the challenge of taking a picture of the landing, but not taken from the lander itself.
Why? Well, if you think about it, we’ve never seen a third-person view of a spacecraft landing on a celestial body before. The Embry-Riddle EagleCam currently hurtling towards the Moon is about to change this – prepare to change your desktop wallpaper.
The EagleCam is designed to deploy from the lander approximately 30m above the lunar surface and capture the snap of Odie as it touches down on the lunar surface.
Here’s a quick video that explains how this will work:
Not only will this be the first third-person photo of a landing, but the camera will also be the first-ever university student-built project to land on the Moon and the first to use WiFi there.
Read more:
- Artemis: Everything you need to know about humanity’s return to the Moon
- How did the Moon form?
- 50 beautiful photos of the Moon landing missions from the Project Apollo Archives
3. Miniature moons
Just in case you’re thinking everything onboard still sounds like parts of a science experiment, enter Jeff Koons’ Moon Phases.
En route to the Moon, alongside all the sciencey stuff, are 125 sculptures depicting... the Moon itself.
Yes, you read that correctly. Renowned American artist Jeff Koons has crafted 125 stainless steel sculptures capturing the Moon's phases as observed from Earth, various perspectives in space, and even during a lunar eclipse. Each sculpture is named after a notable figure who has left a significant mark on human history.
In a tweet the day before the launch, Koons said that he was “honoured to have the first authorised artwork on the Moon”.
Don’t worry, though; we Earthlings don’t have to miss out on the artwork just because it’s 384,400km (238,855 miles) away. Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, based on the sculptures of the Moon's phases are available to purchase, should you be so inclined.
4. (Nearly) All of human knowledge
It might not keep most people up at night, but for the folks over at Arch Mission Foundation, the idea that humanity hasn’t ‘backed up’ its knowledge is worrying. If something catastrophic happens here on Earth that destroys our decentralised data drives – floppy disks and all – what happens to everything we’ve learned?
To help solve this issue, a permanent repository of human information is being sent up with the lander.
“The Arch Mission Foundation's lunar repository is fascinating,” science and technology writer Joelle Renstrom tells BBC Science Focus. "The idea of squirrelling knowledge away on another celestial body in case something terrible happens on Earth sounds like the premise of a dystopian sci-fi book.”
The concept, Renstrom explains, is not too different from the Golden Record that was sent out into the Universe onboard Voyager, “but the difference here is that we know where it landed”.
“It's interesting to think about what knowledge and images are representative enough of the human race to make it into such a repository; it's interesting too to think of who gets to decide,” she continues.
According to Intuitive Machines, contained in the repository is an archive including the Rosetta Project, Long Now Foundation content, Project Gutenberg content and other cultural archive datasets.
Also included is the English version of Wikipedia, meaning future generations can easily learn about Gandhi, the ancient Silk Road and the origins of YouTube sensation Baby Shark, all in one place.
5. A very fancy filing cabinet
Are you worried that storing your data on Earth isn’t secure enough? Send it to the Moon.
Lonestar Data Holdings has snagged a place onboard the IM-1 mission for its 'Independence' data centre, which will (drum roll please) store documents on the Moon and transmit documents back to Earth for the first time.
The data centre has already tested its capabilities by transmitting the US Declaration of Independence back to Earth while Odie is on its way to the Moon.
“Data storage on the Moon might be seen as a secure location for a repository, simply because of its remoteness,” Dr Peter Bentley, a computer scientist and author based at University College London, tells BBC Science Focus. “It has the advantage that few people are going to be around to mess with it physically.”
Bentley points out, however, that hackers tend not to travel much and that maintenance issues can arise when keeping your data centres on the Moon since they're exposed to a lot of solar radiation and dust. Plus, if anything does happen to break, it's quite a long way to go to fix them.
That said, the Moon doesn’t suffer from wildfires, heatwaves, wars and other disasters that can strike down on Earth, so it could be a good place to store your data after all.
When can I watch the Moon landing?
You can follow the Intuitive Machine lunar landing live via NASA's web service. Coverage begins at 4:00pm Eastern Time (9:00pm GMT) and will follow the mission as it descends to the moon's surface.
Tune in on NASA TV, NASA+ Streaming service or the NASA app for live video and commentary.
Read more:
- Artemis: Everything you need to know about humanity’s return to the Moon
- How did the Moon form?
- 50 beautiful photos of the Moon landing missions from the Project Apollo Archives
About our experts
Joelle Renstrom is a science writer and journalist whose work has appeared Astrobiology, The Guardian, The Washington Post, New Scientist and others. She also teaches writing and research at Boston University and maintains an award-winning blog, Could This Happen, about the relationship between science and science fiction.
Peter Bentley is a computer scientist and author who is based at University College London. He is the author of books including 10 Short Lessons in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics and Digital Biology.