© Reuters. The touchdown strut of Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lunar lander absorbs first contact with the lunar floor throughout its touchdown on the Malapert A website on the Moon, because the liquid methane and liquid oxygen engine continues to throttle February 22, 2024. Intu
By Joey Roulette and Steve Gorman
(Reuters) -Odysseus, the primary U.S. spacecraft to land on the moon in half a century, misplaced energy and went dormant on Thursday because it entered a frigid lunar dusk, ending its mission per week after a lopsided landing that hindered operations and its scientific output.
Intuitive Machines, the Texas-based aerospace firm that NASA paid $118 million to construct and fly Odysseus, mentioned its floor management staff had acquired a ultimate “farewell transmission” from the spacecraft earlier than it went darkish on the moon’s south pole area.
“Goodnight, Odie. We hope to listen to from you once more,” Intuitive mentioned in an internet replace, referring to the spacecraft by the nickname its engineers had affectionately adopted for a lander they mentioned proved to be extra sturdy than anticipated.
Earlier within the day, Intuitive mentioned its groups would program Odysseus to “cellphone dwelling” to the corporate’s floor management middle Houston if and when the spacecraft receives sufficient solar energy to reawaken in three weeks with the subsequent dawn over its touchdown website.
The corporate beforehand mentioned Odysseus would possible run out of battery energy someday Wednesday night time, simply after its sixth full day on the moon, because the solar sank low on the lunar horizon and photo voltaic vitality regeneration grew to become inadequate.
However Intuitive mentioned on Thursday morning that Odysseus was “nonetheless kicking,” and that flight controllers would search to obtain a ultimate stream of information transmitted the 239,000 miles (385,000km) again to Earth earlier than contact was misplaced.
Intuitive’s shares – which had practically tripled after which plummeted in wild swings over the course of the mission – remained up about 20% from simply earlier than the launch, giving the corporate a market worth of about $600 million.
LOPSIDED LANDING
The six-legged Nova-C-class lander, formed like a hexagonal cylinder and standing 13 ft (4 m) tall, was launched on Feb. 15 from NASA’s Kennedy Area Heart in Florida on a Falcon 9 rocket provided by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. It arrived in lunar orbit six days later.
The automobile reached the lunar floor final Thursday after an Eleventh-hour navigational glitch and nail-biting descent that ended with Odysseus catching one among its ft on the bottom and touchdown in a sharply tilted place, instantly impeding its operations and limiting knowledge retrieval.
Intuitive Machines have mentioned human error was accountable for the navigational difficulty. Flight readiness groups had uncared for to manually unlock a security swap earlier than launch, stopping subsequent activation of the automobile’s laser-guided vary finders and forcing flight engineers to hurriedly improvise another throughout lunar orbit.
The last-minute work-around possible prevented a crash-landing however might have contributed to the automobile touchdown askew, apparently catching a foot on the uneven floor and coming to relaxation leaning at a 30-degree angle, firm officers mentioned.
A picture launched on Wednesday confirmed the spacecraft with its touchdown gear visibly broken because it touched down on the moon.
The corporate has mentioned that two of the lander’s antennae have been knocked out of fee, and its photo voltaic panels have been likewise dealing with the fallacious path.
Regardless of persistent difficulties in speaking with the lander and maintaining its photo voltaic batteries charged, NASA mentioned it managed to extract some knowledge from all six of its science payloads delivered by Odysseus. Different prospects with devices on board noticed combined outcomes.
Nonetheless, Intuitive and NASA executives hailed the science achieved and the “comfortable” lunar touchdown itself – the primary ever by a commercially manufactured and operated area automobile – as a key breakthrough in a brand new chapter of lunar exploration.
One explicit advance touted by Intuitive was the success of the proprietary propulsion system it developed for the lander, the primary automobile whose deep-space flight was powered by a mixture of liquid methane and liquid oxygen.
Odysseus was additionally the primary U.S. spacecraft to make a managed descent to the lunar floor since NASA’s ultimate crewed Apollo mission to the moon in 1972.
And it was the primary beneath NASA’s Artemis program, which goals to ship a number of extra industrial robotic landers to the moon on science scouting missions forward of a deliberate return of astronauts to Earth’s solely pure satellite tv for pc later this decade.
Two different Intuitive Machine moon landers are slated for launch later this yr.
So far, area businesses of simply 4 different nations have ever achieved a “comfortable” moon touchdown – the previous Soviet Union, China, India and, simply final month, Japan, whose lander likewise tipped over and skilled power-regeneration issues.
Earlier this week, Japan’s area company mentioned its lander had unexpectedly survived a lunar night time and re-established communications with Earth a month weeks after going dormant.
The USA is the one nation ever to have despatched people to the lunar floor.
