The NASA feed I watched mentioned “NASA science” being carried on the lander so I think this is just an expansion of our move from fully public funded space science missions to a mix of private/public.
At first I wasn’t happy about it, but I know our country and too many people don’t give a single shit about NASA or any space exploration so the budget is terrible.
In 2018, the United States declared the Moon of strategic interest and refocused NASA on returning to the Moon sustainably under the agency’s Artemis program. The following year, NASA awarded Intuitive Machines its first task order to land a suite of payloads on the surface of the Moon. Over the next four years, Intuitive Machines built an entire space program[…]
They used SpaceX to get most of the way there, everything else was on IM, but the whole thing was tasked and funded by NASA.
I think you’re right. I watched the landing live stream seems like they were having lots of trouble reaching it after it landed. The mission success seemed forced.
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