A new private mission will attempt to land on the moon, and it will capture it with 3D cameras.

In 2024, two lunar missions failed. Third time lucky? This is the hope for Intuitive Machines IM-1 Missionin collaboration with NASA and SpaceX, which launches on February 14.

At the beginning of the year, Astrobotic’s Peregrine module aimed to become first private mission to land on the moonbut due to engine failure, it did not reach our satellite.

Just a few weeks ago, a Japanese Space Agency mission managed to land on the Moon… but with the module upside down.

First private mission to land on the moon?

Intuitive Machine worked with NASA to create a special lander. It has four cameras on four “legs” that They will film in 3D as the module lands (hopefully) on the surface of the Moon.R.

The purpose of these SCALPSS cameras is to test how lunar dust is affected by the spacecraft’s landing engines. You can see the cameras in this video:

NASA is already thinking about the future: with this experiment, it wants to test the dust that moves when the spacecraft lands, so that it does not interfere with the daily life of human colonies on the Moon.

Michelle Munk, principal investigator for SCALPSS and acting chief architect for NASA’s Space Technology Office, explains in a statement that “if we place objects (landers, habitats, etc.) close together, we could cause sand to explode in the place where they are. that we have nearby, and this will force us to protect other assets on the surface.

And he concludes: “It can add mass, and that mass extends throughout the architecture. It’s all part of a complex engineering problem.”

For the first time we will be able to see the moon landing in 3D, although NASA has already warned that we will have to wait a few months. The recorded images must be inspected by the lander, sent back to Earth, and processed to create a three-dimensional image of the landing zone.

The IM-1 mission will carry out 12 experiments in total, six of them from NASA.

. You can see them here.

The Odyssey lander will take off from Earth on February 14 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. If all goes well, will land on the moon at the end of the monthand finally we can see moon landing in 3D. Good luck!