Odysseus sends back first images from southernmost moon landing
Washington:
A US lunar lander that overturned during landing has sent back the first images from the southernmost point ever landed on the moon.
The unmanned Odysseus, built by Houston-based Intuitive Machines, last week returned the United States to Earth’s cosmic neighbor after a five-year absence, a first for the private sector.
But as it fell, one of its legs got stuck in the water, causing it to tip over in the final act of a dramatic journey that was saved by a temporary repair.
“Odysseus continues to communicate with the flight controllers in Nova Control from the lunar surface,” Intuitive Machines said in an update to X on Monday.
The post included two photos: one of the Hexagon as it descended, and another taken 35 seconds after it fell, revealing the pitted soil of the Malapert A impact crater.
This photo was taken about 35 seconds after Odysseus rolled as it approached its landing site. At this stage, the camera is located on the starboard rear side of the lander. 2/5 (26FEB2024 0745 CST) pic.twitter.com/oUcjk3bCqW
— Intuitive Machines (@Int_Machines) February 26, 2024
NASA plans to return astronauts to the moon later this decade and paid Intuitive Machines about $120 million for the mission as part of a new effort to delegate cargo missions to the private sector and stimulate a commercial lunar economy.
Odysseus carries a suite of NASA instruments designed to improve scientific understanding of the moon’s south pole, where the space agency plans to send astronauts later this decade.
Unlike the Apollo program, this plan is to establish long-term habitats and collect polar ice for drinking water and rocket fuel for future missions to Mars.
Meanwhile, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) probe on Saturday photographed the 4.0-meter-tall “Nova-C” stage within 1.5 kilometers (one mile) of its intended landing site lander.
Flight controllers intend to collect data until the lander’s solar panels are no longer exposed to light. Based on the positioning of the Earth and Moon, we believe flight controllers will continue to communicate with Odysseus until Tuesday morning. Image credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona… pic.twitter.com/FFt8CXZPIC
— Intuitive Machines (@Int_Machines) February 26, 2024
The student team behind the external camera originally intended to capture footage from Odysseus during its descent said in a weekend update that they remain “optimistic” that the EagleCam can still eject from the fallen lander and return to the orbit in about Take photos from four meters away.
Astronomer and space mission expert Jonathan McDowell told AFP the fact that Odysseus was lying on his side did not worry him too much.
It was a “success with a small footnote – I would give it a minus,” he said, adding that people “preferred it upright and there are definitely things they need to figure out for future tasks ” But overall, NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program is moving in the right direction.
Intuitive Machines revealed on Friday that its engineers forgot to turn on a safety switch, preventing the spacecraft’s laser-guided landing system from starting, forcing them to upload a software patch and rely on NASA’s experimental system to save the day.
“Rocket science is difficult not because any one thing is super difficult, but because you have to do a million simple things,” McDowell said of the “embarrassing” oversight.
Intuitive Machines said flight controllers will continue to download data until the lander’s solar panels are no longer exposed to light, which is now estimated to be Tuesday morning.
The mission was shorter in duration than originally planned, possibly due to poor orientation of the spacecraft.
Japan’s space agency, which also staggered a spacecraft to the moon last month, delivered a surprise on Monday when it woke its SLIM lander after a moonlit night that lasted about two Earth weeks.
McDowell said the two crashes may indicate that the current generation of landers are too heavy and therefore tip over too easily in low gravity, unlike the short, squat, splay-legged landers built by the United States and Soviet Union during the Cold War. Devices are different.
Intuitive Machines joins an exclusive club of five countries that have achieved a soft landing on the moon: the Soviet Union, the United States, China, India and Japan. Three previous private attempts have failed, including one last month by another U.S. company, Astrobotic.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
