Intuitive Machines' Odysseus lunar lander comes down earlier than expected and shifts slightly to one side the moment of touchdown On Thursday, it apparently got stuck on the sole of the moon's surface and flipped onto its side, officials said Friday.
Telemetry indicates that the top of the spacecraft may be resting on a rock or that the lander may have tipped over on upsloping terrain. But Intuitive Machines co-founder and CEO Steve Altemus said Odysseus could still draw power from the sun and transmit engineering and science data to Earth. .
Engineers are downloading the data and hope to downlink the stored images as early as this weekend to reveal the orientation of the 14-foot-tall spacecraft.
“We're downloading and commanding data from a buffer inside the spacecraft and trying to get you pictures of the surface, because I know everyone is hungry for pictures.” Artemus said.
NASA TV
In the meantime, all of the lander's active instruments, provided by NASA and commercial customers, are facing away from the lunar surface and should be able to return data as planned. But given that part of the tilted spacecraft's antenna points away from Earth, it's likely to take longer than expected.
And we don't have much time. Regardless of the fall, the sun will set below the horizon at the landing site a little over a week after her, and the lander's solar cells will cease generating electricity. That was always in the cards.
The spacecraft is not designed to withstand the ultra-low temperatures of a moonlit night, and flight controllers do not expect Odysseus to respond, although they will attempt to recontact the spacecraft when the sun rises again.
“Three major achievements”
However, Joel Kearns, NASA's deputy assistant administrator for exploration, praised Intuitive Machines for the successful landing despite the erratic performance.
“I would like to congratulate Intuitive Machines on three major achievements,” he said. “One, it's the first time the United States has made a successful soft landing on the moon since 1972. Second, it's the first non-governmental, for-profit organization to actually land safely on the moon.
“And third, it will have a touchdown point at 80 degrees south latitude, much closer to the moon's south pole than any previous U.S. robotic or human spacecraft.”
This is important to NASA, which plans to send Artemis astronauts to the Antarctic region in the coming years to look for potential ice deposits while establishing a long-term presence on the moon. ing.
On Saturday, President Joe Biden commented on the milestone in a statement and congratulated NASA and the Intuitive Machines team.
“America is doing tough things,” the statement read. “We will meet the great scientific challenges of our time. If we work together, nothing is beyond our capabilities.”
Odysseus was partially funded by NASA's Commercial Lunar Service Payload Program. The program is designed to help private industry develop transport capabilities that NASA can use to deliver payloads to the Moon.
intuitive machine
NASA paid Intuitive Machines $118 million to carry Odysseus' six payloads to the moon.
It was launched on February 15th by SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket., Odysseus put the brakes on its orbit around the moon on Wednesday. Flight controllers then raised the trajectory slightly to correct for a slight aiming error and were preparing to land when a problem occurred with the sensor package needed to fine-tune the trajectory to touchdown. Did.
Fortunately for Intuitive Machines, one of the six NASA payloads onboard Odysseus was intended to test a different type of navigation sensor, an instrument known as NDL (short for Navigation Doppler Lidar). It was.
NDL systems operate like radar, but instead of radio waves, they capture reflected laser light to accurately measure a vehicle's speed, direction, and altitude.
Odysseus was ordered to make additional orbits around the moon, and engineers quickly wrote and tested software patches to integrate NASA's systems into the lander's navigation algorithms.
“That's what made their success possible,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told CBS News Thursday night. “It was her NASA payload that saved the day. (But) don't take anything away from Odysseus and his Intuitive machine, because this is the first commercial lander that was able to accomplish this feat. is.”
As Odysseus approached the landing site, he pitched up horizontally and vertically to make a final descent to touchdown. The flight plan called for the spacecraft to land at a purely vertical speed of 2 miles per hour, which was approximately a moderate walking speed.
But because of the unexpected lateral velocity, engineers believe that one of the lander's six footpads may have hit a rock or become stuck in a gap, causing the rover to tip over.
Based on telemetry, “it has to be lifted somewhat horizontally off the surface, so it would have to be on a rock or have its feet in a crevice or something to maintain that position.” said Artemus.
intuitive machine
The revelation that Odysseus had tipped over during touchdown came as a surprise following an overnight update from Intuitive Machines that telemetry showed the spacecraft was in an upright orientation. Artemus said Friday that its conclusions were based on “old data.”
A more thorough analysis of data from the inertial measurement device, which indicates the direction of residual propellant and gravity, revealed that the spacecraft was actually stuck on its side.
The landing highlighted the risks faced by robotic spacecraft attempting to land on unknown terrain and the challenges of autonomously navigating around rocks and other obstacles that are invisible from orbit.
a Japanese lunar probe A fall during touchdown last month limited his ability to complete a planned science task. Both Artemus and Intuitive's chief technology officer Tim Crane were optimistic that Odysseus could still achieve most of its objectives.
However, at least one expected objective will not be achieved.
An experimental camera system built by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University students was designed to be released before landing to capture images of the lander during its final descent, but software related to guidance system issues Due to constraints, it was not deployed as planned.
The EagleCam package will later be ejected, flying dozens of feet to one side, Altemus said. If all goes well, the cameras will show Odysseus resting on its side, giving engineers and the public the best possible view of the spacecraft's orientation.
