The return of the United States to the Moon half a century after the Apollo program has been accompanied by a setback. The Odysseus lander fell while landing on the Moon and came to rest on its side. While that didn’t render him completely useless, it has limited his mission. The company Intuitive Machines, which NASA has hired for this trip, acknowledged yesterday that the fall limits the charging time of its batteries and that shortens its mission on the Moon.
“Flight controllers intend to collect data until the lander’s solar panels are no longer exposed to light. “Based on the position of the Earth and the Moon, we believe that flight controllers will continue to communicate with Odysseus until Tuesday morning,” Intuitive Machines said in a statement giving an update on the mission.
That is between two and three days less than initially planned. Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus admitted Friday that the device “caught a foot on the surface, tilted” and landed on its side. At the time of the moon landing, there was already a long wait that presaged that something was wrong. Even so, the module has been operational for at least a few days. Even under the best of circumstances, Odysseus only had a week to operate on the surface before the long lunar night arrived.
Another device recently shipped from Japan had a similar problem. It also capsized when landing on the moon and came to rest on its side, but in that case it was unable to take advantage of its solar panels and was initially inoperative, without power. On Monday the 26th, the Japanese space agency advertisement what SLIMas the artifact is called, had overcome the long lunar night and had managed to wake up: “Last night, a command was sent to SLIM and a response was received, confirming that the spacecraft made it through the lunar night and maintained its communication capabilities.”
Satellite images provided by NASA taken at an altitude of 90 kilometers show Odysseus on the Moon, although little more than a dot can be seen. After traveling nearly a million kilometers, the device landed less than 1.5 kilometers from its planned landing site, Malapert A, using a laser telemetry system that had to be installed shortly before landing when the originally planned system failed. .
According to NASA, the lander ended up in a small, degraded crater with a slope of 12 degrees. It is the closest a spacecraft has ever been to the lunar south pole. During the descent, Intuitive Machines’ algorithms detected “nine safe landing sites within the south polar region,” according to the company. It is a region that contains permanently shadowed areas that may be rich in resources, including water ice that could be used for future propulsion and life support on the Moon.
The brief statement from Intuitive Machines does not explain whether the experiments with the transported payloads have been successfully completed or if the fall has prevented them from being carried out.
Intuitive Machines shares have plummeted on the stock market this Monday. They have lost 34.62%, something that was already anticipated in Friday’s operations outside normal trading hours. The company has more missions contracted with NASA.
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