Odysseus, the first U.S. spacecraft to land on the moon in half a century, was “still operational” on Thursday but was close to shutting down as scientists awaited final reports from its multimillion-dollar data-gathering mission. Signal.
The spacecraft landed on the lunar surface a week ago, and its operators had hoped it would operate for up to 10 days. But an awkward sideways landing disrupted communications and affected its solar charger.
The final decision on its fate will come from Intuitive Machines, the Texas company that spent $118 million to build the robotic lander and fly it to the lunar surface. At 10:20 a.m., Intuitive said Odysseus was still operational and that flight controllers intended to download more data and configure the lander to “call home” if it gained access after three weeks of slumber on a cold moonlit night. More solar words.
NASA said it successfully extracted some data from all six science payloads, although it remains to be seen how much information the agency and the six commercial payloads lost.
The Nova-C class lander, which is 4 meters (13 feet) tall, was launched on February 15 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a Falcon 9 rocket supplied by SpaceX. Six days later it began orbiting the moon.
The hexapod arrived on the lunar surface on February 22 after 11 hours of navigation glitches and descents, which ultimately caused Odysseus to land on its side or in a steeply tilted position, immediately hampering its operations.
Intuitive Machines said the next day that human error was to blame for the navigation issues.
The flight preparation team neglected to manually unlock the safety switch before launch, preventing the vehicle’s laser-guided rangefinder from subsequently activating and forcing flight engineers to scramble to improvise an alternative in lunar orbit.
An Intuitive executive told Reuters on Saturday that the safety switch failure stemmed from the company’s decision to forgo test firings of the laser system during pre-launch inspections to save time and money.
Whether the rangefinder malfunction and a last-minute replacement workaround ultimately led to Odysseus’ banked landing remains an open question, according to Intuit officials.
Still, the company said on Friday that the spacecraft’s two communications antennas were inoperable and pointed in the wrong direction, and that its solar panels were also facing the wrong way, limiting the spacecraft’s ability to recharge.
As a result, Intuition said on Monday it expected to lose contact with Odysseus on Tuesday morning, terminating the mission early.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told Reuters on Tuesday that Odysseus apparently landed next to the crater wall and was tilted at an angle of 12 degrees, although it was unclear whether that meant 12 degrees from the surface or from an upright position. 12 degrees.
Intuitive executives said Feb. 23 that engineers believe Odysseus caught the foot of one of its landing legs on the lunar surface as it approached landing and tipped over before coming to rest horizontally, apparently propped up on a rock.
An image from NASA’s orbiting spacecraft released on Monday shows the lander as a small blob near its intended destination in the moon’s south polar region.
Odysseus became the first American spacecraft to land on the moon since NASA’s last manned Apollo lunar mission in 1972.
It was also the first landing of a commercially built and operated space vehicle on the moon and the first for NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to Earth’s natural satellite within this decade.
So far, only four countries’ space agencies have achieved “soft” lunar landings – the former Soviet Union, China, India and, last month, Japan, whose lander also flipped sideways.
The United States is the only country to have put a human on the lunar surface.
Follow us on Google news ,Twitter , and Join Whatsapp Group of thelocalreport.in
