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Curious question: as a private company, how do you determine your lunar orbit parameters after a burn? Are they leveraging Earth/orbit-based radar? Or satellit
by ethbr1 3y ago
Curious question: as a private company, how do you determine your lunar orbit parameters after a burn?
Are they leveraging Earth/orbit-based radar? Or satellites around the moon? Or something else?
- vardump 3y agoMaybe star (and moon/earth) tracking and radio signals to earth?
- dylan604 3y agoI don't understand the "as a private company" qualifier. The math is the same, and doesn't care if it's private/public.
- martincmartin 3y agoBut observations need powerful domestic telescopes. If you're NASA, you own and have access to them.
- jebarker 3y agoDo you mean optical telescopes? I would have thought they used earth based radar plus star tracking onboard to figure out where they are in orbit, but I don't know.
- dylan604 3y agoNo, as an American, you own them. NASA just administrates them for you. If you're a space faring private company, you contract out the various parts of the mission. You didn't build a rocket, you hired SpaceX. You didn't build the relay network, you licensed access time. You don't build a space observation platform, you license time to use them.
- tzs 3y agoWhich of those, or what else instead, did the specific company in this case do for this specific mission? That is what ethbr1 was asking.
- datadrivenangel 3y agoAlmost certainly NASA.
- sneak 3y agoIf I owned them, I would get to use them. I don’t, so logically I must not. By this logic, there are huge amounts of land that I also “own” that guys with M16s (or, more accurately, M4s) will keep me from walking on if I try to go there. Half the year I live in southern Nevada, so this distinction has some direct practical consequences in my life. It’s deceptive. Government property is not owned by citizens, it is under the exclusive control of the state—i.e. not you.
- dylan604 3y agoYou conveniently left out the part of licensing the time. You can license with the BLM for access to government control land. Ranchers do it all the time. Special events like Burning Man also do it. You just have to contact the correct agency to do it. But of course, it so much easier to make a know it all sarcastic filled internet rant than do anything approaching useful information to a conversation.
- bigstrat2003 3y agoDo you not see how that just furthers the parent's point? If I have to license usage of something, I don't actually own it.
- dylan604 3y agoI think we have a basic misunderstanding of private vs public ownership. When we all own it, you can't just do whatever you want like build a house, but withe proper permit, you can use it. If it was private, I could never do something with what you owned.
- bigstrat2003 3y agoIn the case of public ownership, I don't own it though. The entire public does. I'm willing to say "the people own" these telescopes, but that isn't what you originally said. You said "as an American, you own them" which isn't true.
- patmorgan23 3y agoThis is a pretty silly pedantic point. Public property is owned and controlled by governments for the benefit of the public. That does not mean each individual member of the public has traditional ownership rights to said property.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> as an American, you own them. NASA just administrates them for you Across public and private spheres, the word “ownership” loses meaning. (Nobody “owns” NASA or the U.S. government, though they do “belong”to we the people.) That’s why, in ownership disputes between nations and under the law, the operant term is “control.”
- andyjohnson0 3y agoI'm not the person you replied to, but I assume they meant something like "as a non space agency". Ie how are they tracking the lander? How are they sending and receiving telemetry? What resources did they use for mission planning and site selection? Perhaps they've built their own comms system for example - maybe even a multi-site one that enables continuous contact - or maybe they're using NASA/ESA/JAXA assets. It would be interesting to know. I'm not aware of any commercial providers for lunar communications.
- maronato 3y agoTheir website has all that info. They have their own satellites for comms, and lots of other stuff too. They seem to either own or co-own all of the hardware
- ooterness 3y agoGround infrastructure is important for space missions. Intuitive Machines is operating under a NASA contract for Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) [1]. As such, they can negotiate access to NASA resources such as DSN and NEN for this mission. Intuitive Machines has also built several ground stations of their own [2]. These allow communications with the spacecraft as well as the range/velocity measurements needed for accurate navigation. I'm the longer term, the Artemis program plans to build out LunaNet [3] for improved communications and GPS-like navigation services. [1] https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/clps/intuitive-machines/ https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/clps/intuitive-machine... [2] https://www.intuitivemachines.com/post/commercial-lunar-network-completed-ahead-of-im-1-moon-mission https://www.intuitivemachines.com/post/commercial-lunar-netw... [3] https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/lunanet-empowering-artemis-with-communications-and-navigation-interoperability/ https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/lunanet-empowering-arte...
- dpflan 3y agoThanks for these great details. Is there a fee for using the NASA resources (I assume there is, I just don't know how this works)?
- ooterness 3y agoYes, there is a fee. The largest antennas (i.e., the absolutely gigantic 70 meter dishes) can be $5k per hour. Further discussion on StackOverflow [1] and the NASA MOCS guide [2]. [1] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/21005/what-makes-time-on-the-dsn-so-expensive https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/21005/what-makes-t... [2] https://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/files/6_NASA_MOCS_2014_10_01_14.pdf https://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/files/6_NASA_MOCS_2014_10_01_...
- mlhpdx 3y agoThe name LunaNet made me think of GPS cubesats and ground transponders that would make precise positioning lunar equipment/missions without the latency of coupling to earth systems. It's not that, it seems. Anyone want to start a location-based service company? ;)
- 3y ago