Intuitive Machines said the next day that human error was to blame for the navigation issues.
Flight controllers said Odysseus, the first U.S. spacecraft to land on the moon since 1972, was nearing the end of its fifth day on the lunar surface. The spacecraft was still operating but its batteries were in their final days. hours, the spacecraft is expected to go dark.
Texas-based Intuitive Machines said in an online update Tuesday that its control center in Houston remains in contact with the lander as the lander “effectively sends payload science data and images to advance the company’s mission.” mission objectives”.
Last Thursday, the Odysseus spacecraft reached the lunar surface after an 11th-hour navigation glitch and a tense descent that ended with Odysseus landing in a sideways, or sharply tilted, position that hampered the its communications and solar charging capabilities.
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 create an alternative while in lunar orbit.
An Intuitive executive told Reuters on Saturday that the safety switch failure stemmed from the company’s decision to forego a test launch of the laser system during pre-launch inspections to save time and money.
Whether the rangefinder malfunction and a last-minute replacement workaround ultimately caused Odysseus to land in an unusual manner remains an open question, according to Intuition 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, Intuitive said Monday it expected to lose contact with Odysseus on Tuesday morning, cutting short a planned seven- to 10-day mission on the moon carrying more than a dozen scientific instruments for NASA and several commercial customers. .
Next to the crater wall?
On Tuesday morning, Intuitive said controllers were still “finalizing the lander’s battery life, which could be extended by another 10 to 20 hours.”
The company’s latest update suggests the spacecraft may last a total of six days before the sun sets on the landing site.
Shares of Intuitive fell 8% on Tuesday, paring losses after the company said it remained in contact with the lander. Still, the stock erased most of its gains from the end of last week.
It remains to be seen how much research data and images from the various payloads may not be collected due to Odysseus’ skewed landing and shortened lunar lifetime.
NASA paid Intuitive $118 million to build and fly Odysseus.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told Reuters on Tuesday that he understood agency scientists wanted to retrieve some data from all six payloads. He also said Odysseus apparently landed next to the crater wall and was tilted at an angle of 12 degrees, although it’s unclear whether that meant 12 degrees to the ground, or 12 degrees to an upright position.
Intuitive executives said February 23 that engineers believe Odysseus got stuck on 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.
Photos of Odysseus on the lunar surface have yet to be released. But an image from NASA’s orbiting spacecraft released on Monday shows the lander as a small speck near its intended destination in the moon’s south polar region.
Although the landing was less than ideal, 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.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
