Hawaii astronomers were over the moon Thursday after a private commercial company’s spacecraft made the first successful American moon landing in more than 50 years.
“I guess we were over the moon (Wednesday), but we’re not anymore — we’re on the moon,” said Steve Durst, director of the Waimea-based International Lunar Observatory, which developed two instruments carried by the historic Odysseus lunar lander that successfully touched down on the moon’s surface Thursday afternoon.
The lander, developed by Houston-based Intuitive Machines and borne to the moon by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, is the second attempted mission (and the first successful one) under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Lander Services program, which helps finance private aerospace moon missions carrying instruments from both NASA and other organizations, including ILOA.
ILOA’s contributions to the lander include a narrow-field and a wide-field camera developed in Waimea. The narrow-field camera bears the name Ka ‘Imi, which means “to search.” The device was given its name by a Kealakehe Intermediate School student in 2022.
Durst noted that, for that student, as well as a large percentage of Americans, the successful moon landing is “a first,” given that the last U.S. moon landing happened in 1972.
“We put so many aspirations and programs into those cameras,” Durst said. “It feels wonderful.”
Durst said Thursday afternoon that ILOA hoped to get the cameras online within a day — communication problems with the craft nearly endangered the landing — and use them to broadcast another first: an image of the Milky Way Galaxy from the lunar surface.
“That picture will say, ‘We’ve arrived on the moon, and we’re looking out toward the future,’” Durst said. “Like how the Apollo 8 mission took a picture of the Earth from the moon, we’ll be taking a picture of the Milky Way.
“If this camera with a Hawaiian name delivers this image that makes its way to the history books and the 7 billion people on Earth, then I think there’s a lesson to be learned from that,” Durst added, saying that the mission represents a new direction for Hawaii astronomy in the 21st century.
Doug Simons, director of the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy, said the mission is a “technological pathfinder,” explaining that conducting astronomical observations from the surface of the moon has been a concept bandied about for decades, but has never been attempted.
“It’s really gratifying to see this bear fruit,” Simons said, adding that he worked closely with Durst during Simons’ previous job at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, whose offices are next to ILOA’s.
“It’s really impressive that we have commercial companies with the know-how to pull off something like this,” Simons said. “I think that says a lot about the U.S.’ position and bodes well for new research pathways.”
Simons added that the historic mission’s connection with ILOA and a Kealakehe student “shows how global astronomy does connect with Hawaii in really unexpected ways.”
Despite the significance of the lander, its work will be short-lived: In less than eight days, the rotation of the moon will carry Odysseus to the dark side of the moon, where the 14 days of night and frigid temperatures will render the lander inoperable.
But while Durst said ILOA will scramble to conduct as many observations as possible during that time, the mission is only a precursor for a future ILOA mission: a plan to land a longer-term robotic observatory to watch the skies for years from atop a lunar mountain.
Many specifics about that mission are still pending, but Durst said he hopes that the publicity of Odysseus’ successful landing will help the future mission move forward.
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.