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These photos provided by NASA show images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera team that confirmed that Odysseus completed its landing.
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These photos provided by NASA show images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera team that confirmed that Odysseus completed its landing.
AP
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida – A private American lunar lander is expected to stop working on Tuesday, as its mission was disrupted after landing on its side near the moon’s south pole.
Intuitive Machines, the Houston company that built and flew the spacecraft, said Monday that it will continue collecting data until sunlight no longer hits the solar panels. Based on the position of the Earth and the Moon, officials expect that to happen Tuesday morning. That’s two or three days less than the week NASA and other customers had been counting on.
The lander, called Odysseus, is the first American spacecraft to land on the Moon in more than 50 years and carries out experiments for NASA, the main sponsor. But it arrived too quickly last Thursday and the foot of one of its six legs caught on the surface, causing it to fall, according to company officials.
According to photographs from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter flying overhead, Odysseus landed about a mile (1.5 kilometers) from its intended target, near the Malapert A crater, just 185 miles (300 kilometers) from the south pole of Moon.
The LRO photographs taken from 90 kilometers (56 miles) high are the only ones that show the lander on the surface, but as little more than a smear in the grainy images. A camera ejection experiment conducted by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, to capture images of the lander as it descended, was canceled shortly before landing due to a last-minute navigation issue.
According to NASA, the lander ended up in a small, degraded crater with a slope of 12 degrees. This is the closest any spacecraft has come to the South Pole, an area of interest because frozen water is suspected in the permanently shadowed craters there.
NASA, which plans to bring astronauts to this region in the coming years, paid Intuitive Machines $118 million to conduct six experiments on the surface. Other customers also had items on board.
Instead of landing upright, the 14-foot (4.3-meter) Odysseus fell on its side, making communication with Earth difficult. Some antennas were covered by the downed lander, and those that were still exposed ended up close to the ground, resulting in spotty communications. The solar panels also ended up much closer to the surface than anticipated, less than ideal in the mountainous terrain. Even under the best of circumstances, Odysseus only had a week to operate on the surface before the long lunar night arrived.
This image provided by Intuitive Machines shows its Odysseus lunar lander, which captured this image approximately 35 seconds after tilting during its approach to the landing site.
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This image provided by Intuitive Machines shows its Odysseus lunar lander, which captured this image approximately 35 seconds after tilting during its approach to the landing site.
AP
Since the 1960s, only the United States, Russia, China, India and Japan have successfully made moon landings, and only the United States with crews. Japan’s lander also ended up on the wrong side last month.
Despite its tilted landing, Intuitive Machines became the first private company to join the elite group. Another American company, Astrobotic Technology, tried last month, but did not reach the Moon due to a fuel leak.
Intuitive machines also almost failed. Ground crews did not activate the switch for the lander’s navigation lasers before the Feb. 15 liftoff from Florida. The oversight was not discovered until Odysseus was circling the moon, forcing flight controllers to rely on a NASA laser navigation device that was on board simply as an experiment.
As it turned out, NASA’s test lasers guided Odysseus to a near-target landing, resulting in the first moon landing by an American spacecraft since the Apollo program.
Twelve Apollo astronauts walked on the Moon between 1969 and 1972. While NASA occasionally placed a satellite around the Moon, the United States did not launch another lunar landing mission until last month. Astrobotic’s failed flight was the first in NASA’s program to promote commercial deliveries to the Moon.
Both Intuitive Machines and Astrobotic have NASA contracts for more moon landings.