2024-02-29 15:39:25
(Automated translation by Reuters, please see disclaimer
(Updated with lander still operating in paragraphs 1 and 3) by Joey Roulette and Steve Gorman
Odysseus, the first American spacecraft to land on the Moon in half a century, was “still active” Thursday, but on the verge of shutting down, as scientists watched for the last signals from its mission to collect data, which cost several million dollars.
The spacecraft landed on the lunar surface a week ago and its operators hoped it might operate for up to 10 days. But an awkward side landing disrupted communications and affected its solar chargers.
It is the Texan company Intuitive Machines LUNR.O, to which NASA paid $118 million for the construction of the robotic lander and its delivery to the lunar surface, which will give the last word on the fate of the machine. . As of 10:20 a.m. ET (1520 GMT), Intuitive said Odysseus was still operating and that flight controllers intended to download additional data and configure the lander to “phone home” if and when it will have more solar energy following a three-week sleep through the freezing lunar night.
Shares of Intuitive Machines fell 3% on Thursday and have lost more than a third of their value since the start of the week, following the hard landing on February 22.
NASA said it managed to extract some data from its six science payloads, but it remains unclear how much information the agency and half a dozen commercial payloads lost.
The 13-foot (4-meter) Nova-C-class lander was launched Feb. 15 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a Falcon 9 rocket provided by SpaceX. ‘Elon Musk. It began orbiting the moon six days later.
The six-legged vehicle reached the lunar surface last Thursday following an 11-hour navigational glitch and descent that ended with Odysseus landing in a sideways or steeply inclined position, immediately hampering its operations .
Intuitive Machines said the next day that human error caused the navigation problem.
Flight preparation teams had neglected to manually unlock a safety switch before launch, preventing subsequent activation of the vehicle’s laser-guided rangefinders and forcing flight engineers to hastily improvise a workaround during orbit lunar.
An Intuitive executive told Reuters on Saturday that forgetting the safety switch was the result of the company’s decision to forgo a test firing of the laser system during pre-launch checks, to save time and money. money.
Whether the rangefinder failure and last-minute substitution of a workaround ultimately caused Odysseus to land sideways remains unresolved, according to Intuitive officials.
ANTENNAS AND SOLAR PANELS AFFECTED
Nonetheless, the company said last Friday that two of the spacecraft’s communications antennas were disabled, facing the wrong way, and that its solar panels were also facing the wrong direction, limiting the vehicle’s ability to recharge your batteries.
As a result, Intuitive said Monday that it expected to lose contact with Odysseus on Tuesday morning, ending the mission prematurely.
NASA chief Bill Nelson told Reuters on Tuesday that Odysseus had apparently landed next to a crater wall and was tilted at an angle of 12 degrees, although it was not known exactly whether it was 12 degrees from the surface or 12 degrees from a vertical position.
Intuitive executives said Feb. 23 that engineers believe Odysseus caught the foot of one of its landing legs on the lunar surface as it approached landing and that it had toppled before coming to rest horizontally, apparently leaning on a rock.
An image taken by an orbiting NASA spacecraft and released Monday shows the lander as a tiny speck near its intended destination in the moon’s south pole region.
Odysseus became the first American spacecraft to land on the moon since the last crewed Apollo mission to the lunar surface in 1972.
It is also the first moon landing ever by a commercially manufactured and operated space vehicle, and the first under NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to Earth’s natural satellite within a decade. .
To date, the space agencies of only four other countries have achieved a “soft” moon landing: the former Soviet Union, China, India and, most recently, last month, Japan, whose lander also rolled over on its side.
The United States is the only country to have sent humans to the lunar surface.
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