The interest in returning to the Moon for research and exploration has increased as new tipping point technologies are providing the potential for safer access to the lunar surface. NASA's Artemis program, for example, plans to return humans to the lunar surface by 2025 to study water deposits on the lunar south pole. This program will also serve as a critical milestone for technology development and programmatic operations for manned Martian surface exploration. For humanity's safe return to the lunar surface, advances in technology and knowledge of the lunar surface environment are required.

Ahead of the United States' Artemis missions, Intuitive Machines (IM) received in 2019 a NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) contract and will land the Nova-C lunar lander in late 2023. In his 2019 Alumni SpeakER Series talk entitled, "Returning to the Moon: A New Era of Lunar Exploration", Steve Altemus, President and Chief Executive Officer of IM, challenged the students of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) to build a camera system to capture the first-ever third-person view of a lunar landing. Accepting the challenge, students within the university's Space Technologies Laboratory, located within the John Mica Engineering and Aerospace Innovation Complex, generated the idea for what would become EagleCam, the finalized product before delivery can be seen in picture above.

We encourage to read the paper "EagleCam: a 1.5U Low-Cost CubeSat Mission for a Novel Third-Person View of a Lunar Landing" to learn more about the scientific return that the mission will provide. The paper was published by IEEE during the 2023 Aerospace Conference in Big Sky, MT. To learn more about IM and the mission check out the following link.

EagleCam mission concept of operations. After deployment, images of the lunar landing will transmitted via Wi-Fi in real-time to a secondary computer stored in the deployer attached to IM's Nova-C. Courtesy of Space Technologies Laboratory.

Ultimately, the primary mission objective is capturing the first-ever third-person view of a landing on the lunar surface. Not only is this objective significant as a mission driver, but is symbolic of humanity's return to the Moon and beyond. Additionally, this will be the first landing developed by a private venture, provide ride-share, and be capable of delivering scientific payloads to the Moon. As a consequence, capturing the landing within the field-of-view (FOV) of any of the cameras in the CubeSat is of the utmost importance. With limited FOVs, however, this will not always be guaranteed. Therefore, to maximize the probability that Nova-C will be within the CubeSat's FOV prior, during, and post landing, EagleCam is equipped with three 186° FOV fisheye-lens cameras.