| Scheduled for (UTC) | 2025-02-28, 00:16 |
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| Scheduled for (local) | 2025-02-27, 19:16 (EST) |
| Launch site | LC-39A, Kennedy Space Center, Florida, USA |
| Booster | B1083-9 |
| Landing | A Shortfall of Gravitas |
| Payloads | Nova-C IM-2, CHIMERA GEO 1, Odin, Lunar Trailblazer (SIMPLEx 5) |
| Customer(s) | Intuitive Machines / NASA |
| Target orbit | Trans Lunar Injection |
Webcasts
| Stream | Link |
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| NASA | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx8qzcomV5A
| Space Affairs | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLkWulEOl_Y
| Spaceflight Now | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OapwBAVQI4
| NASASpaceflight | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi0cLW7J6Ic
| The Launch Pad | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRmsuvkvlpg
| SpaceX | https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1894892860270354876
| The Space Devs | https://www.youtube.com/@thespacedevs/videos
Stats
Sourced from NextSpaceflight and r/SpaceX:
☑️ 6th launch from LC-39A this year
☑️ 22 days, 1:04:00 turnaround for this pad
☑️ 100th landing on ASOG
☑️ 416th Falcon booster landing, 430th Falcon recovery attempt
☑️ 24th Falcon 9 mission this year, 442nd overall
☑️ 24th SpaceX mission this year, 458th overall (excluding Starship flights)
☑️ 25th SpaceX launch this year, 474th overall (including Starship flights)
Mission info
Nova-C IM-2
The Nova-C lunar lander, named "Athena", will deliver The Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain (TRIDENT), also known as the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1), and the Mass Spectrometer observing lunar operations (MSolo) for NASA, and several other payloads for commercial companies to the Mons Mouton region of the Moon approximately 100 miles from the Moon’s south pole.
PRIME-1 will drill into the lunar surface, harvest and bring ice to the Moon’s surface, and use a mass spectrometer to measure how much is lost to sublimation as it turns from solid into vapor in a vacuum.
The mission will also carry a deployable lander called Micro Nova (µNova) for NASA's Tipping Point Program named "Grace", which will demonstrate the ability to carry a payload of 1kg and travel more than 2.5 km by doing "hops". During the flights, µNova will also provide high-resolution imagery of craters.
CHIMERA GEO 1
Epic Aerospace will send their CHIMERA-GEO transfer ship into space to go to a geostationary orbit, with the aim of covering an orbital position. For this launch, CHIMERA-GEO is carrying an unidentified 16U cubesat manifested by Exolaunch.
Odin
A payload for AstroForge, a company that plans to mine asteroid resources. Odin intends to head into deep space to observe near-Earth asteroid 2022 OB5 in preparation for their first retrieval mission. Odin will fly by the asteroid at a distance of about 1 kilometer, arriving 11 months after launch.
Lunar Trailblazer (SIMPLEx 5)
Lunar Trailblazer is a small (class D) lunar orbiter, part of NASA's SIMPLEx program, that will detect and map water on the lunar surface to determine how its form, abundance, and location relate to geology. Its mission is to aid in the understanding of lunar water and the Moon's water cycle.