When Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander is still about 100 feet over the surface of the moon, it will eject a small box.
That box is EagleCam, a system of cameras built by students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla. As it falls to the surface, the device will snap photos of Odysseus landing on the moon’s surface — a sort of space selfie.
If it works, it will be the first student-built project to operate on the moon.
The $350,000 project resulted from a visit to Embry-Riddle in 2019 by the chief executive of Intuitive Machines, Steve Altemus, who is an alumnus of the university.
Mr. Altemus challenged the students to build a payload “with the goal of taking the first third-person view of a spacecraft landing,” said Troy Henderson, a professor of aerospace engineering. “So that was the starting point.”
During the final descent of Odysseus on Thursday, a spring will push EagleCam away from the spacecraft, and as the instrument falls — it will track its motion but lacks any propulsion to turn or move itself — three cameras with wide fields of view will be taking pictures.
“No matter what happens, if we slide or tumble or anything like that, one of those three cameras will see the lander,” Dr. Henderson said.
Even after EagleCam hits the ground at about 25 miles per hour, it should continue taking photographs. The students performed drop tests of a model of EagleCam into a sand pit with several inches of material simulating lunar soil on top. The test version survived.
“We’re pretty confident that we’ll be OK,” Dr. Henderson said.
One key to the success of EagleCam is that Odysseus has to land in operating condition, too. The Embry-Riddle device will send the photos to the lander, which will then relay them to Earth.
It was not a simple project.
“We were in the throes of design during Covid,” said Christopher Hayes, a doctoral student who served as the lead engineer for EagleCam. “So how did we adapt to design a camera that was going to the moon while we were all on Zoom at our houses?”
The pandemic disrupted supply chains, adding more challenges. “We actually ordered a pack of screws from a company, and it came in nine months later,” Mr. Hayes recalled. “Some of our initial budgets were off.”
There was also continual turnover as students graduated. “Then we had to kind of backfill and make sure that the new students knew what they were doing,” Mr. Hayes said.
As landing approached, Mr. Hayes said he was excited and confident. “There’s a peace knowing that it’s kind of out of our hands now,” he said. “We just have to trust the system to do what it’s built to do.”
Within a few hours after landing, Mr. Hayes expects to find out how EagleCam did and, he hopes, see the photos it took.