Sun, Jul 16, 2023
One Small Step for …
Founded in 2013, Intuitive Machines, Inc. is a Houston-based technology concern with foci in the space and lunar exploration, lunar payload, lunar lander, Unmanned Aerial System (UAS), and flight-instrument sectors.
Intuitive Machines announced it had successfully conducted a test run of its Nova-C lunar lander. The undertaking occasioned a significant technical achievement and evinced the company’s progress toward the completion of its lunar lander.
The complete-spacecraft test run verified the Nova-C lander’s flight software, avionics, liquid oxygen and liquid methane loading, high-pressure helium system performance, propulsion system functionality, and culminated in a hot-firing of the lander’s main engine.
Intuitive Machines co-founder, president, and CEO Steve Altemus stated: “This was the most comprehensive test to date short of flying the lander in space. This test run represents a crucial step forward in validating the performance of the entire Nova-C lunar lander system on its way to the Moon.”
Mr. Altemus added: “The technical excellence the Intuitive Machines team showed during this comprehensive test has propelled the Company closer to delivering Nova-C to Florida for launch.”
Conducted at Intuitive Machines’s Small Vehicle Engine Verification Facility at the Houston Spaceport, the complete-spacecraft test run marked the culmination of a series of tests which collectively heralded the imminence of the Nova-C lander’s readiness for space-flight.
Comprehensive testing of Intuitive Machines’s Nova-C lunar lander—to include the powering-up and protracted operation of the entirety of the spacecraft’s systems—was an essential step in the process of verifying the lander performs to expectations. The whole of the lander’s constituent systems underwent extensive integrated functional testing in preparation for the fully-integrated performance test.
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