American spacecraft lying sideways on the moon, collided with a rock after touchdown

Washington:

The first US spacecraft to visit the Moon since the Apollo era is likely lying sideways after its dramatic landing, the company that built it said Friday, while ground controllers download data and surface photos from an uncrewed robot. Are doing the work of.

The Odysseus spacecraft landed near the moon’s south pole at 6:23 p.m. Eastern time (2323 GMT) on Thursday, when ground teams had to switch to a backup guidance system and took several minutes to establish radio contact. The lander came to rest.

Intuitive Machines, the company behind the first moon landing by a private company, initially posted on social media that its hexagonal spacecraft was upright, but CEO Steve Altemus told reporters Friday that the statement was based on misinterpreted data. was based on.

Instead, it appears to have caught a foothold on the surface and tilted up, coming to rest horizontally with its top on a small rock – a feat widely praised as historic. Took some shine off the achievement.

The NASA probe, called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, should be able to photograph Odysseus over the weekend, which will help pinpoint its exact location.

Altemus said that while the solar arrays were overhead, the team’s ability to download data from the science experiments on board was being hampered by downward-facing antennas that are “unusable for transmission back to Earth – and indeed is a barrier to our ability to communicate and get the right data so we can get everything we need for the mission.”

According to Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, which built the “EagleCam” device, due to complications associated with the landing, the decision was made not to shoot an external camera to capture the landing.

But the team will still try to deploy it from the ground to get an external image of Odysseus.

immediate solution

Odysseus is still considered the first success for a new fleet of NASA-funded lunar landers designed to conduct science experiments that pave the way for the return of American astronauts to the Moon later this decade under the Artemis program. Will pave the way.

Last month, a Chandrayaan-1 mission by another US company ended in failure, raising the stakes to demonstrate that private industry has no way of repeating the feat achieved by US space agency NASA during its manned Apollo 17 mission in 1972. Has the capacity.

Underscoring the technical challenges, Intuitive Machines’ own navigation technology failed and ground engineers were forced to jury-rig a solution, hastily patching a software switch to an experimental NASA laser guidance system. Had to be written which was intended to run only as a technology demonstration.

Altemus later revealed that Odysseus’s own laser system failed to turn on because someone forgot to flip the safety switch before takeoff, which they described as “a mistake on our part”.

Landing confirmation should have come a few seconds after the milestone, but about 15 minutes passed before a faint signal was received, enough to declare that the spacecraft was in one piece and had met its target. .

commercial moon fleet

NASA paid Intuitive Machines $118 million to send six experiments under an initiative that turns cargo services over to the private sector to achieve savings and stimulate the broader lunar economy.

Odysseus also carries cargo for private customers, including a reflective heat wrapping developed by Columbia Sportswear and used to protect the spacecraft’s cryogenic propulsion tanks.

The United States, along with international partners, wants to develop long-term habitation at the South Pole, collecting ice there for drinking water – and for rocket fuel for further trips to Mars.

The first crewed landing under NASA’s Artemis program is scheduled to occur before 2026. Meanwhile, China plans to make its first crewed landing on the Moon in 2030, ushering in a new era of space competition.

This mission was the fourth attempt at a soft lunar touchdown by the private sector. Intuitive Machines has joined an exclusive club of moon landings, along with the national space agencies of the Soviet Union, the United States, China, India and Japan.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)