Odysseus turns off. The long night reaches the moon’s south pole, and the space module launched by the private company Intuitive Machines runs out of power. Hatred, As company employees named it, it was the first American landing on the moon since the end of the Apollo program in 1972. It also made history by becoming the first device of a private company to reach the moon’s natural satellite. Earth. Although it has been something of an eventful odyssey, the US space agency (NASA) and the company itself believe that the mission was a success. Due to the fall he suffered during the moon landing, Odysseus It shuts down prematurely, but scientists are still convinced of the possibility of waking it up in a few weeks.
Those responsible for Intuitive Machines and NASA employees who worked on the mission made the announcement this Wednesday at a press conference at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. In it, they reviewed Intuitive Machines’ first trip to the moon, the IM-1 mission, which will be followed by others in the coming months.
“We have accomplished a very successful mission,” said Steve Altemus, CEO of Intuitive Machines. Altemus insisted time and time again that the important thing about this mission was to reach the moon, to make a soft landing – even if it wasn’t that soft – to establish contact and perform various tests. “These goals are met, so in our opinion it is an undisputed success,” he said. The company also appreciated that the deep space propulsion system for liquid methane and liquid oxygen designed by the company was successfully tested in flight.
Altemus downplayed the fact that the duration (at least the initial one) was shortened by the lunar calamity. And he praised the resilience of the lander: “What a spectacular job this robust and brave lander has done, all the way to the moon and then to the surface to bring back so much data, information and science to NASA and our commercial companies. It’s just an incredible testament to how robust and as someone said, beastly that little spaceship is. “We are very happy,” he said euphorically as the performance began.
The module sustained less energy than originally thought, but slightly more than what was feared a few days ago. This Wednesday he was running out of energy. “We’ll put it down Hatred sleep and hopefully wake up in the next two or three weeks for the development test goal, which is actually to see if, when the sun hits the solar panel again, we can get a signal back from this lander, so we’re excited about that point.” Altemus added.
The possibility of his awakening is open, but by no means guaranteed. A Japanese module that reached the moon a few weeks ago and was unable to deploy its solar panels because it fell on its side managed to generate power last weekend. Odysseus It is not specifically designed to withstand the freezing temperatures of a long lunar night. Extreme cold could crack electronic components and kill batteries. Mission Director Tim Crain said it was unknown if he would wake up. Sue Lederer, a NASA scientist, was optimistic: “He’s a very wild guy. I have confidence in Hatred at the moment”.
Whether it wakes up or not, Intuitive Machines has achieved what no other company has yet, despite some failed attempts. Altemus particularly celebrated this: “What we have done in the process of this mission is to radically change the economics of landing on the moon. We have opened the door to a strong and prosperous lunar economy in the future. “It’s really a point in history that we should celebrate as we move toward later missions around the Moon.”
Steve Altemus and mission director Tim Crain, chief technology officer of Intuitive Machines, reviewed some of the obstacles encountered during the lunar journey. Laser guidance for landing has been physically disabled. Someone disabled it before launch so the laser wouldn’t cause accidental damage, so it made it all the way to the moon. There was no way to restore its operation. For this reason, a Lidar-based descent and landing sensor had to be used, a device that works on the same principles as radar, but with a laser that the device carried as an experimental payload.
To install it, the module made another orbit around the moon. The experiment worked, but not completely. Odysseus He missed the required flat terrain by 1.5 kilometers and ended up at a higher altitude than expected. As a result, it fell too quickly and with a shift not only vertically but also laterally. As a result, he hit the ground harder than his legs could handle, Altemus explained. The four-meter lander remained upright for a moment, with its engine running, before falling slowly down the gentle slope.
This damaged or hid some of the antennas, which were able to transmit less data than originally planned, but without preventing testing of the sent mechanisms. Along the way, there were other failures and unforeseen events (as many as 11 were reported to be the responsibility of Intuitive Machines and NASA), which the engineers resolved as best they could.
“The soft landing on the moon is a great achievement,” Joel Kearns, deputy administrator for exploration at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said at a news conference. “This mission is groundbreaking. “It can be considered a flight test. Sue Lederer, Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) project scientist at NASA’s Johnson Center, said the agency’s teams are still analyzing the data, but are satisfied with what they are getting. “All payloads have reached some level of their targets,” he said.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson called the mission a success as all six of the space agency’s experiments on the lander were still underway Wednesday morning. “There’s a big difference between landing a crew and landing a bunch of instruments,” he said at another event, according to statements released by the Associated Press.
NASA was the main customer with half of the 12 payloads it carried Odysseus. Intuitive Machines paid $118 million to take its work tools to the moon. This is a stereoscopic camera to observe the dust cloud that rises during landing; a radio receiver for measuring the effects of charged particles on radio signals; experiment with autonomous navigation capabilities to support future surface and orbital operations; an array of eight retroreflectors that should serve as a permanent position indicator on the Moon for decades; a Lidar-based descent and landing sensor that was used as an emergency, and a gauge that uses radio waves to determine how much fuel remains in the tanks in a low-gravity environment.
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