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Comment by ethbr1 | Hacker News Reader

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?

Ground 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-machine...

[2] https://www.intuitivemachines.com/post/commercial-lunar-netw...

[3] https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/lunanet-empowering-arte...

You are awesome! Thanks for all the links and info, to an open-ended question.

The process of bootstrapping to Earth-space-parity is fascinating to me.

One thing in the 1960s, when there was no GPS and terrestrial net assumption, but now you're going from everything we've built here to... if you don't bring it, you don't have it.

The accretion of Mars support satellites has also been fascinating.

It's gonna be wild the first time SpaceX sends a Starship to the moon and/or mars to unload a load of starlink satellites into orbit.

Thanks 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)?

Yes, 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-t...

[2] https://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/files/6_NASA_MOCS_2014_10_01_...

The 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? ;)

I don't understand the "as a private company" qualifier. The math is the same, and doesn't care if it's private/public.

I'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.

Their 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

But observations need powerful domestic telescopes. If you're NASA, you own and have access to them.

No, 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.

> 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.”

This 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.

If 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.

You 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.

Do 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.

I 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.

In 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.

pedants going to pedant

Ownership rights and various kinds of access rights are not identical and often conflated.

For example, if I own a water well, I don’t necessarily have the rights to do whatever I want with it. Some jurisdictions might let me pump out as much water as I want, but even those will punish me for blatantly polluting it (one would hope).

What some people think of as something akin to “total ownership” — completely unlimited access — would be tantamount to putting one’s “rights” above everyone else’s. Even dictators usually have some limits on their power, whether by laws, norms, or geopolitical pressures.

I would say that in your example, the well is really two things: the water table (which you don't own), and the pump you use to draw water (which you do own).

Which of those, or what else instead, did the specific company in this case do for this specific mission? That is what ethbr1 was asking.

Almost certainly NASA.

Do 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.

Maybe star (and moon/earth) tracking and radio signals to earth?

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