The Odysseus lunar lander successfully landed at a site close to the moon's south pole. The moon's south polar region has long intrigued scientists because water, in the form of ice, is thought to be relatively abundant in the region's permanently shadowed craters.
The Odysseus moon lander, nicknamed “Odie,” is part
of a private lunar exploration mission led by Intuitive Machines, a private
company. It involves collaboration with government agencies like NASA, leveraging
their expertise and resources for mission success. This partnership reflects a
growing trend of public-private cooperation in space exploration, advancing
humanity's capability to explore and utilize celestial bodies beyond Earth. The
spacecraft is designed to assess the lunar environment ahead of NASA's plan to
return a crewed mission to the moon through the Artemis program in late 2026.
The current push toward the “privatization” of
space will surely accelerate space exploration, which I find thrilling. At the
same time, privatization may also hasten space “exploitation.”
—Mitchell
Hegman
Ah… profit is not a four letter word. What is one of the priciest materials we produce? One kilo of steel in a synchronous oribit. Take a look at the profit of producing one kilo of steel produced at a Lagrange point from the asteroid Psyche (moved to the Lagrange point). We don’t know how to mine an asteroid yet, but that is just an engineering problem (as opposed to first level science breakthroughs like Pastuer finding bacteria cause bad beer).
ReplyDeleteI am actually pretty excited about space exploration and think it's good to see private enterprise enter the picture. Mining an asteroid presents so many challenges, but wouldn't it be grand!
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