Why NASA’s lunar lander at the Moon’s south pole is called Odysseus

The module Ulysses“Odie” for NASA astronauts, lifted off on February 15 to land on the Moon this Thursday, concluding the first US Moon landing in 50 years.

Odysseus is named after the legendary hero of Greek mythology.. He is a character invented by Homer which is included in his epic The Iliad and gives its name to the epic Odyssey. According to the Homeric poems, Ulysses stands out for his ingenious, cunning and versatile character.

The choice of name was not arbitrary. Since the Apollo program (1961-1972), NASA has tended to name its major projects after Greek mythological figures. The promoter of this idea was Dr. Abe Silversteinwho led the first American spaceflight missions.

Silverstein named the first two missions after the gods Mercury AND Apollo inspired by a book on the subject that contained a photo of Apollo. At the time, the doctor said that the image of “Apollo riding his chariot across the sun was appropriate for the large scale of the proposed program.”

It is worth clarifying that between Mercury and Apollo NASA carried out the Gemini Project, inspired by the myth of Dioscuros. There was also the mission Artemisia, twin sister of Apollo; the Orion ship; The mission Odyssey on Mars.

NASA probably also used Greek names because they were the ones who made some of the world’s first discoveries about space. Both they and the Romans named the planets after their gods.

The moon landing

The Odysseus lifted off Feb. 15 from Florida with several NASA experiments. Once on the Moon, you will have a few days to conduct your experiments before it practically freezes, due to the low lunar temperatures.

It is not expected that this module, 4.3 meters tall and 675 kilos in weightand the first American to reach the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972, returns to Earth.

Specifically, the landing will take place near the Malapert massif, about 300 kilometers from the south pole of the Moon, an area full of “uncertainty”, according to NASA experts.

Researchers believe the area is made up of material from the lunar highlandssimilar to the Apollo 16 landing site.

The primary objective of this mission, IM-1, is to bring scientific instruments and technology demonstrations to market south pole of the Moon.

A historic photo

The Odysseus module sent back a photo of the lunar surface ahead of its scheduled landing at 6:24 pm Eastern time (11:24 pm GMT).

Intuitive machinesthe company in charge of the moon landing changed the landing time twice this Thursday due to “correction maneuvers” and the decision to perform “an additional orbit” before the descent.

The photo taken by the American private company’s module shows the northern sectors of the Moon as it heads towards the South Pole, according to the American space agency NASA.

The Texan company, which will go down in history as the first American to set foot on the Moon, detailed that Odysseus’ navigation camera captured the image “of the Bel’kovich K crater in the Moon’s northern equatorial highlands.”

Main sources: EFE