“Odysseus “It’s alive and well.” The company Intuitive Machines launched that message this Friday, but the need to insist on it and the lack of photographs and other evidence about the state of the lander indicated that something was not quite right. Finally, the company’s CEO, Steve Altemus, has admitted that the device “caught its foot on the surface, tilted” and landed on its side. This is the first time that a private company has managed to land a device on the Moon. The mission has also marked the return of the United States to the satellite half a century after the Apollo program. It has been a historic success, but something less.
At the time of the moon landing, there was already a long wait that presaged that something was wrong. Even so, the company claimed victory and this Friday assured that the flight controllers communicate and order the vehicle device to download scientific data and that the lander has good telemetry and solar charging. Altemus began the press conference in Houston proclaiming the success of the mission and the achievements it entails. Then, the problem has arrived. Very graphically, he has taken a model of the Odysseus and has illustrated how he believes that the module has overturned while landing on the moon.
“The lander Odysseus landed yesterday at 5:24 central time, with a stable and controlled landing and a soft and safe landing,” he began. “It’s pretty incredible. It was a pretty exciting seven-day mission to get to the Moon. (…) The device is stable, near or at our planned landing site. We have communications with the lander, from the large radio astronomy antennas around the world that are part of our lunar telemetry network, and with the spacecraft from several of the antennas and two of the radios. To begin with, it is phenomenal,” he said.
He explained that NASA and the company are trying to get photos. “I know everyone is hungry for those surface photos, but we have some interesting data that gives us an attitude position of where the lander is, and I’ll explain that in a moment. We have the sun hitting the solar panels and charging our batteries. We are providing power to the spacecraft and are at 100% charge. “It’s fantastic,” he continued.
But there is usually a but. “If you go back to the Apollo era, there was no mission that went absolutely perfect, so you have to be adaptable. You have to be innovative and you have to persevere, and we persevered until the last moments to ensure that this soft landing occurred as we wanted. Let me just talk briefly about the tilt at the surface.” At that moment he took out the model of the hexagonal prism and showed how, apparently, while he was going down and moving sideways, he tripped over one of its support feet on a rock and overturned. “We believe that this is the orientation surface of the lander on the moon,” he said while holding the model horizontally, although he assured that this has not ruined the mission and that some of the planned experiments are already being carried out. cape.
“Just to clear up some confusion: yesterday we thought we were in a vertical position,” he said, noting that gravity telemetry on the fuel tanks seemed to indicate that. Apparently, however, these were residual quantities and new, more precise telemetry indicates that the module is lying down. “I hope we’re going to get a picture here this weekend and share it,” she concluded.
The device landed in a dangerous region for a lunar landing, full of craters and cliffs, but considered of high value, because it is believed that these permanently shadowed craters contain frozen water, near the Malapert A crater, 260 kilometers from the lunar south pole. . The crater is named in honor of the 17th century Belgian astronomer Charles Malapert. There, near where India has already successfully landed, it is intended to exploit the gigantic resource of water ice for future space exploration. Astronauts visiting the Moon in the future could use the ice in these craters for drinking water, oxygen, and even fuel. Previous US missions reached the equatorial lunar regions.
The module recently shipped from Japan had a similar problem. He capsized on landing and came to rest on his side. The problem, in that case, is that it could not take advantage of its solar panels and was left inoperative, without energy. Odysseus, On the other hand, it is “alive and well,” according to the company, and that allows the payloads to be used to carry out the planned tests.
One of NASA’s experiments was launched when the lander’s navigation system failed in the final hours before landing. The module made an additional orbit around the Moon so it could switch at the last minute to NASA’s new laser system.
Another experiment, a cube with four cameras, had to take off 30 seconds before landing to capture images of the landing. Odysseus. But Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s EagleCam was deliberately turned off during the final descent due to the navigation switch and remained attached to the lander. Embry-Riddle’s Troy Henderson said his team will try to free the EagleCam in the coming days so it can photograph the lander from about 25 feet away.
With persistent uncertainty over the position of Odysseus On the Moon, “getting that final image of the lander on the surface is still an incredibly important task for us,” Henderson told the Associated Press.
After having skyrocketed on the stock market with the moon landing this Thursday, Intuitive Machines’ shares plummeted this Friday outside normal trading hours, with falls of more than 30%, when it was learned that not everything had gone well.
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