Startups

Intuitive Machines’ first moon lander also broke ground with safer, cheaper rocket-style propulsion

Comment

intuitive machines odysseus descending
Image Credits: Intuitive Machines (opens in a new window)

Intuitive Machines’ first lunar lander officially lost power today after spending seven days on the moon. The lander made history for being the first American hardware to reach the lunar surface since 1972 and the first privately built spacecraft to land on the moon. But the lander, called Odysseus, will be remembered for another reason: its propulsion system.

That propulsion system, which uses a combination of cryogenic liquid oxygen and liquid methane, could unlock new capabilities in space and de-risk future missions by other commercial providers.

Before Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 mission, no lander had ever used this combination of propellants. If they sound familiar, it’s because they’re used in high-performance rocket engines, like SpaceX’s Raptor, Blue Origin’s BE-4 and Relativity Space’s Aeon R.

But landers — and most spacecraft today — use “space storable” or hypergolic propellants, like hydrazine or nitrogen tetroxide, which can be passively stored but are highly toxic. In contrast, “cryogens” are more efficient, higher energy and considerably less dangerous, but they must be actively cooled to very, very low temperatures.

This presents some unique challenges. Because the fuels must be kept so cold, they can only be stored prior to lift-off for a very short amount of time. To get around this issue, Intuitive Machines and SpaceX started fueling the Nova-C class lander’s VR900 engine (which was built by IM) just three hours before lift-off, when the rocket was on the launch pad and the spacecraft was already inside the payload fairing. This is anything but typical.

It’s so out-of-the-ordinary that SpaceX had to develop entirely new capabilities to fuel the lander, Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX’s VP of build and flight reliability, said during a press conference on February 13. That included modifying the launch pad and the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket and adding an adapter to access the payload fairing when it was already mated to the vehicle.

The two companies performed two wet dress rehearsals prior to launch; issues with propellant loading resulted in the first launch attempt being pushed by a day, to February 15. After the successful launch, Intuitive Machines also ran into a brief issue chilling the liquid oxygen feed line, which took longer than anticipated. Once the propellant was sufficiently cooled, flight controllers successfully fired the engine in space for the first time the following day.

Intuitive Machines makes history by landing the first commercial spacecraft on the moon

Because the company was using liquid oxygen and liquid methane, which are highly efficient, they were able to take a more direct trajectory to the moon. The spacecraft only had to transit the Van Allen belt, a high-radiation zone around the Earth, once, which reduced the spacecraft’s exposure to damaging high-energy particles.

Two VR900 engines will also be used on Intuitive Machines’ much larger “Nova-D” spacecraft, to deliver 500-750 kilograms of payload to the moon. (The Nova-C lander has a payload capacity of 100 kilograms.)

The Nova-C and Nova-D landers will be far from the last spacecraft to use cryogenic propellants in space. Impulse Space’s high-energy kick stage, Helios, will use cryogens to deliver payloads directly to geostationary orbit, CEO Tom Mueller explained in an interview from January.

“People have talked about doing big kick stages with hypergols before, and I just think, you’re talking tons of propellant and the price and the cost of safety are just exorbitant,” he said. “So using very low-cost, very high-energy propellants like liquid oxygen and liquid methane is kind of like a no-brainer.”

One of the six NASA science and research payloads that Odysseus carried to the surface also directly leveraged the cryogenic propulsion system. The Radio Frequency Mass Gauge statement from the agency’s Glenn Research Center uses radio wave and antenna to measure how much propellant is available in the engine’s tanks. It is technology that could be vital for measuring spacecraft fuel levels during long-duration space missions, especially because “slosh” can make measuring liquids in microgravity a challenge.

This issue is of special importance to NASA because the agency’s Artemis missions to return humans to the lunar surface depend on spacecraft that use cryogenic propellants — chiefly SpaceX’s Starship Human Landing System and Blue Origins’ Blue Moon. These missions will require transferring large amounts of cryogenic fluids from on-orbit depots to the spacecraft; while these fluids will need to be on orbit for far longer than Odysseus was in transit to the moon, the IM-1 mission is still squarely kicking down the door for cryogenic use in space.

More TechCrunch

Trawa simplifies energy purchasing and management for SMEs by leveraging an AI-powered platform and downstream data from customers. 

Berlin-based trawa raises €10M to use AI to make buying renewable energy easier for SMEs

Lydia is splitting itself into two apps — Lydia for P2P payments and Sumeria for those looking for a mobile-first bank account.

Lydia, the French payments app with 8 million users, launches mobile banking app Sumeria

Cargo ships docking at a commercial port incur costs called “disbursements” and “port call expenses.” This might be port dues, towage, and pilotage fees. It’s a complex patchwork and all…

Shipping logistics startup Harbor Lab raises $16M Series A led by Atomico

AWS has confirmed its European “sovereign cloud” will go live by the end of 2025, enabling greater data residency for the region.

AWS confirms will launch European ‘sovereign cloud’ in Germany by 2025, plans €7.8B investment over 15 years

Go Digit, an Indian insurance startup, has raised $141 million from investors including Goldman Sachs, ADIA, and Morgan Stanley as part of its IPO.

Indian insurance startup Go Digit raises $141M from anchor investors ahead of IPO

Peakbridge intends to invest in between 16 and 20 companies, investing around $10 million in each company. It has made eight investments so far.

Food VC Peakbridge has new $187M fund to transform future of food, like lab-made cocoa

For over six decades, the nonprofit has been active in the financial services sector.

Accion’s new $152.5M fund will back financial institutions serving small businesses globally

Meta’s newest social network, Threads, is starting its own fact-checking program after piggybacking on Instagram and Facebook’s network for a few months.

Threads finally starts its own fact-checking program

Looking Glass makes trippy-looking mixed-reality screens that make things look 3D without the need of special glasses. Today, it launches a pair of new displays, including a 16-inch mode that…

Looking Glass launches new 3D displays

Replacing Sutskever is Jakub Pachocki, OpenAI’s director of research.

Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI co-founder and longtime chief scientist, departs

Intuitive Machines made history when it became the first private company to land a spacecraft on the moon, so it makes sense to adapt that tech for Mars.

Intuitive Machines wants to help NASA return samples from Mars

As Google revamps itself for the AI era, offering AI overviews within its search results, the company is introducing a new way to filter for just text-based links. With the…

Google adds ‘Web’ search filter for showing old-school text links as AI rolls out

Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket will take a crew to suborbital space for the first time in nearly two years later this month, the company announced on Tuesday.  The NS-25…

Blue Origin to resume crewed New Shepard launches on May 19

This will enable developers to use the on-device model to power their own AI features.

Google is building its Gemini Nano AI model into Chrome on the desktop

It ran 110 minutes, but Google managed to reference AI a whopping 121 times during Google I/O 2024 (by its own count). CEO Sundar Pichai referenced the figure to wrap…

Google mentioned ‘AI’ 120+ times during its I/O keynote

Firebase Genkit is an open source framework that enables developers to quickly build AI into new and existing applications.

Google launches Firebase Genkit, a new open source framework for building AI-powered apps

In the coming months, Google says it will open up the Gemini Nano model to more developers.

Patreon and Grammarly are already experimenting with Gemini Nano, says Google

As part of the update, Reddit also launched a dedicated AMA tab within the web post composer.

Reddit introduces new tools for ‘Ask Me Anything,’ its Q&A feature

Here are quick hits of the biggest news from the keynote as they are announced.

Google I/O 2024: Here’s everything Google just announced

LearnLM is already powering features across Google products, including in YouTube, Google’s Gemini apps, Google Search and Google Classroom.

LearnLM is Google’s new family of AI models for education

The official launch comes almost a year after YouTube began experimenting with AI-generated quizzes on its mobile app. 

Google is bringing AI-generated quizzes to academic videos on YouTube

Around 550 employees across autonomous vehicle company Motional have been laid off, according to information taken from WARN notice filings and sources at the company.  Earlier this week, TechCrunch reported…

Motional cut about 550 employees, around 40%, in recent restructuring, sources say

The keynote kicks off at 10 a.m. PT on Tuesday and will offer glimpses into the latest versions of Android, Wear OS and Android TV.

Google I/O 2024: Watch all of the AI, Android reveals

Google Play has a new discovery feature for apps, new ways to acquire users, updates to Play Points, and other enhancements to developer-facing tools.

Google Play preps a new full-screen app discovery feature and adds more developer tools

Soon, Android users will be able to drag and drop AI-generated images directly into their Gmail, Google Messages and other apps.

Gemini on Android becomes more capable and works with Gmail, Messages, YouTube and more

Veo can capture different visual and cinematic styles, including shots of landscapes and timelapses, and make edits and adjustments to already-generated footage.

Google Veo, a serious swing at AI-generated video, debuts at Google I/O 2024

In addition to the body of the emails themselves, the feature will also be able to analyze attachments, like PDFs.

Gemini comes to Gmail to summarize, draft emails, and more

The summaries are created based on Gemini’s analysis of insights from Google Maps’ community of more than 300 million contributors.

Google is bringing Gemini capabilities to Google Maps Platform

Google says that over 100,000 developers already tried the service.

Project IDX, Google’s next-gen IDE, is now in open beta

The system effectively listens for “conversation patterns commonly associated with scams” in-real time. 

Google will use Gemini to detect scams during calls