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#40
by
sdsds
on 15 Feb, 2024 19:34
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*******************************************************************************
Ephemeris / WWW_USER Thu Feb 15 12:27:59 2024 Pasadena, USA / Horizons
*******************************************************************************
Target body name: IM-1 (spacecraft) (-229) {source: LND1_n229-Feb15}
[...]
******************************************************************************
Date__(UT)__HR:MN delta deldot
***************************************************
2024-Feb-15 21:26 1.5000966312E+05 1.7861738
*******************************************************************************
The JPL ephemeris says IM-1 is now 150,000 km from the center of the Earth with a relative velocity of 1.8 km/s. I believe the name of the ephemeris data file has not (yet) changed.
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#41
by
theinternetftw
on 15 Feb, 2024 19:51
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The JPL ephemeris says IM-1 is now 150,000 km from the center of the Earth with a relative velocity of 1.8 km/s. I believe the name of the ephemeris data file has not (yet) changed.
For reference, that data file is described by JPL Horizons as "Pre-launch trajectory from Intuitive Machines."
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#42
by
haywoodfloyd
on 15 Feb, 2024 19:57
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Has a timeline been published for IM-1?
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#43
by
sdsds
on 15 Feb, 2024 20:46
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Has a timeline been published for IM-1?
Not in detail. During the media telecon they explicitly deferred providing a precise timeline until after the launch, since it would differ between the launch opportunities.
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#44
by
Svetoslav
on 15 Feb, 2024 20:52
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According to a publication at SpaceFlightNow, the most critical step is at about 18 hours post deployment, which 3 hours from now. They'll fire the engine for a first time in deep space. Since a methalox engine has never been tested beyond LEO and this specific engine has never been fully tested in vacuum (only the igniter has been tested), it's an important milestone.
If it's passed, the chance for success greatly increases.
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#45
by
yg1968
on 15 Feb, 2024 21:34
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#46
by
Galactic Penguin SST
on 15 Feb, 2024 22:27
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The JPL Horizons system has some useful information about IM-1 if you go try to generate ephemeris for the spacecraft. (Search for IM-1 as target body.)
I'm not sure it's 100% correct because I'm not sure the F9 2nd stage did a 185 km x 60,000 km pseudo-parking orbit before TLI. Jonathan's attempt at reconstructing the TLEs after SECO-1 (and my own eyes watching the broadcast) suggest a 160 km x 230 km parking orbit, and his SECO-2 reconstruction suggests a full TLI burn from the 2nd stage to moon orbit distance, with a 60,000km orbit never occurring at all.
Still, it's worth quoting in full, I think.
BACKGROUND
Intuitive Machine's Nova-C class IM-1 lunar lander "Odysseus" launched
February 15, 2024 @ 06:05 UTC from LC-39A at Cape Canaveral (USA) on a
SpaceX Falcon 9.
It will be the first commercial lunar lander by a private company, and was
selected through NASA's CLPS initiative.
It is planned to land on the Moon about 9 days after launch (~Feb 24) and
operate for about 7 days after touchdown (until local sunset), about 300 km
from the south pole at crater Malapert A. This is close to the Malapert
Massif, a candidate landing zone for NASA's Artemis III manned-mission.
The Falcon 9 second stage will place the spacecraft into a 185 x 60000 km
Earth orbit. After ~35 minutes of coasting, the second stage will then propel
Odysseus into a Trans-Lunar Orbit (TLO) intercepting the Moon's orbit.
Deployment of the spacecraft is to occur 48 minutes and 24 seconds after
launch when the second stage will use spring force to push the lander away.
Odysseus will make three small adjustment burns en route before the TLO
trajectory takes IM-1 behind the Moon. The main engine autonomous Lunar
Orbit Injection (LOI) burn will place Odysseus into a near-circular 100-km
Low-Lunar Orbit.
Throughout twelve 2-hour-long orbits of the Moon, checks of all spacecraft
systems will be completed before committing to a lunar descent.
The autonomous Descent Orbit Burn will take place on the far side of the
Moon and reduce the craft's orbit to 10 kilometers above the landing site.
The craft will then coast for an hour before powered descent.
The Nova-C class main engine is designed to burn continuously throughout the
powered descent. The lander will be slowed by 1,800 meters per second, then
pitched over to assume landing attitude when 30 meters above the lunar
surface, before bringing the craft to a soft landing.
PURPOSE
The mission' primary objective is to deliver a variety of payloads to the
Moon's south pole region, a part of the Moon that remains unexplored and is
a target for later NASA Artemis manned missions. These payloads include
scientific instruments and technology demonstrations that aim to inform
future human and robotic exploration of the Moon.
SPACECRAFT
Hexagonal cylinder 4.3 m tall, 1.57 m wide, on six landing legs.
Launch mass : 1908 kg
Solar panels : ~200 Watts
PROPULSION
Liquid methane and liquid oxygen
ISP > 320 sec.
SCIENCE INSTRUMENTS
NASA
ROLSES: Radio Observations of the Lunar Surface Photoelectron Sheath
LRA: Laser Retro-Reflector Array
NDL: Navigation Doppler Lidar for Precise Velocity and Range Sensing
SCALPSS: Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies
LN-1: Lunar Node 1 Navigation Demonstrator (S-band navigation beacon)
RFMG: Radio Frequency Mass Gauge statement
Commerical
Columbia Sportswear: Omni-heat infinity thermal material
Embry-Riddle: Eaglecam
Jeff Koons: Moon Phases (125 artwork items)
International Lunar Observatory Association: ILO-X
Galactic Legacy Labs: LUNAPRISE
Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.
Actual parking orbit was 155 x 236 km, 28.47°:
https://twitter.com/TSKelso/status/1758254350898708933
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#47
by
sdsds
on 15 Feb, 2024 23:03
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The TLEs for the spacecraft and the upper stage are essentially identical:
IM-3
1 58963U 24030A 24046.25887661 .00002374 -75020-5 00000+0 0 9994
2 58963 28.4700 67.9440 0061700 102.0800 358.1600 16.28919584 05
FALCON 9 R/B
1 58964U 24030B 24046.25887661 .00002374 -75020-5 00000+0 0 9995
2 58964 28.4700 67.9440 0061700 102.0800 358.1600 16.28919584 06
Does this imply the observation was made prior to spacecraft separation?
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#48
by
jketch
on 15 Feb, 2024 23:44
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Yes, these TLE are for the low Earth orbit prior to the TLI burn which was done by the second stage.
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#49
by
theinternetftw
on 15 Feb, 2024 23:50
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The TLEs for the spacecraft and the upper stage are essentially identical:
[snip]
Does this imply the observation was made prior to spacecraft separation?
The TLE's epoch is 2024-02-15 at 06:12:46 UTC. I don't know the liftoff time to the second, to the minute it was 06:05 UTC. SECO-1 was at T+7:54. Did they take the measurements for that TLE even before SECO-1?
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#50
by
theinternetftw
on 16 Feb, 2024 00:02
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#51
by
mandrewa
on 16 Feb, 2024 00:03
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An update from Intuitive Machine's website, quote:
The IM-1 mission Nova-C class lunar lander continues to be in excellent health, and we are
preparing for our engine commissioning maneuver.
Following nominal launch vehicle separation, the spacecraft autonomously brought up all
sensors and radios. Odysseus listened to the Inertial Measurement Unit to determine attitude
rates and activated the Reaction Control System to nullify those attitude rates as designed.
Earlier today, Nova-C’s navigation system rejected star tracker data, but a patch has been sent
to the spacecraft, and the star tracker updates have resumed nominal operations.
Initially, the star tracker information was numerically conditioned slightly differently than
we anticipated. We were expecting a one-in-a-thousand numerical tolerance and received a
number more like two and three in a thousand. So, Nova-C’s navigation system rejected the star
tracker data.
When we tested this system terrestrially, they were within tolerance, but we experienced slightly
different numerical conditioning in flight.
The vehicle had a very low rate of rotation, approximately .15 degrees per second, mostly around
the long axis, which caused our solar arrays and antennas to rotate in and out of the desired
attitude.
We noticed that, at one point, we passed through Nova-C’s max power attitude, and we recorded
the artificial attitude. We then manually forced the navigation system to advance to attitude
pointing and commanded the vehicle to go to the maximum power attitude we observed.
This put Nova-C into a power-positive configuration and fully charged Nova-C’s batteries. With
the diagnostic data we collected, we identified a patch to align the numerical conditioning of
the star tracker data with our navigation system’s acceptance test. We tested the patch on the
ground, sent it to the spacecraft, restarted the star tracker, and immediately began processing
star tracker updates – resuming nominal operations.
Again, the IM-1 mission Nova-C class lunar lander is in excellent health, and we are preparing for
Odysseus’ commissioning maneuver.
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#52
by
catdlr
on 16 Feb, 2024 00:42
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https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1758293888811368532/photo/1IM-1 Mission Vehicle Health Update 🧵
1/6 The IM-1 mission Nova-C class lunar lander continues to be in excellent health, and we are preparing for our engine commissioning maneuver.
Following nominal launch vehicle separation, the spacecraft autonomously brought up all sensors and radios. Odysseus listened to the Inertial Measurement Unit to determine attitude rates and activated the Reaction Control System to nullify those attitude rates as designed.
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#53
by
ChrisC
on 16 Feb, 2024 01:00
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#54
by
sdsds
on 16 Feb, 2024 01:17
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Just for fun, scaled and cropped to 800x800. Image credit: SpaceX.Replace with smaller version, with embedded credit, for copyright infringement safety
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#55
by
NaN
on 16 Feb, 2024 03:09
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An update from Intuitive Machine's website, quote:
...
We then manually forced the navigation system to advance to attitude
pointing and commanded the vehicle to go to the maximum power attitude we observed.
This put Nova-C into a power-positive configuration and fully charged Nova-C’s batteries.
...
This sounds like a close call. They weren't power-positive until manually commanding an attitude, meaning the clock was ticking on resolving the issue, and all because some component(s) in the star tracker didn't perform quite as well as in ground testing.
It's a reminder of just how many things can go wrong with a brand new spacecraft attempting such a challenging mission. Let's hope engine commissioning goes well so that we can look forward to a lunar landing attempt.
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#56
by
sdsds
on 16 Feb, 2024 04:52
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#57
by
theinternetftw
on 16 Feb, 2024 05:08
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Celestrak has received updated TLEs for IM-1:
IM-1
1 58963U 24030A 24046.86640046 -.00014929 00000+0 00000+0 0 9994
2 58963 28.6500 67.7900 9686440 239.7630 18.8830 0.08992573 90
That's a 220 km x 407909 km x 28.65 deg orbit, with an 11.12 day period.
Edit: With a bit of fiddling, I propagated the TLE out to the current time (well, it was the current time when I started fiddling) and got a distance from Earth's center at 6:30 UTC of 201,263 km, which is pretty darn close to the pre-launch trajectory sent to JPL Horizons. The ephemeris there predicts 201,282 km for this time.
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#58
by
spacexplorer
on 16 Feb, 2024 06:39
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*******************************************************************************
Ephemeris / WWW_USER Thu Feb 15 12:27:59 2024 Pasadena, USA / Horizons
*******************************************************************************
Target body name: IM-1 (spacecraft) (-229) {source: LND1_n229-Feb15}
[...]
******************************************************************************
Date__(UT)__HR:MN delta deldot
***************************************************
2024-Feb-15 21:26 1.5000966312E+05 1.7861738
*******************************************************************************
The JPL ephemeris says IM-1 is now 150,000 km from the center of the Earth with a relative velocity of 1.8 km/s. I believe the name of the ephemeris data file has not (yet) changed.
My advanced graphical interface to access NASA Horizons data:
https://win98.altervista.org/space/exploration/NHUGUI.htmlIM-1 has id "-229".
Moon center: @301
Earth center: @399
Sun center: @0
On lower right corner you find a "plot column" button: if you selected "VECTOR" as "table type", column 9 will contain distance from center object; insert "-1737" in the box to subtract Moon radius and see IM-1 altitude above Moon surface.
You can also get "Moon local time", see attached screenshots.
I attach current Horizons data (pre-launch), which will get deleted once recorded trajectory will be available on Horizons.
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#59
by
FutureSpaceTourist
on 16 Feb, 2024 06:42
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