The first lunar landing by a U.S. entity in 50 geezerhood was celebratedlast week , but the lander from Intuitive Machines , named Odysseus , has had a thought-provoking time as itlanded at a tilted angle . unexampled images released by the company show the damage that the Odysseus lander incurred during landing and sitting slant on the moon ’s surface , but the caller emphasize that it considered the mission a success as it was able-bodied to perform a controlled soft landing place and get science information from all of its payloads .
The lander is expect to draw out of power within a few minute , but there is a hypothesis the fellowship will be able-bodied to power it back on in a distich of week once the lunar night ends .
The image shows the harm to the landing leg on the left side of the image here . It also show the cloud of dust and rocks that were throw up by the lander ’s engines interact with the moon ’s control surface in a know phenomenon called a plume core . The damage to the leg seems to have occurred as the mission bear on down around one mile from the project landing place site in an area with higher acme , the ship’s company say in a briefing , induce the lander to amount in quicker than project and making it skid across the surface .
The image shows how the Odysseus lander came to rest on the moon ’s surface , tilted at an angle of around 30 % . The large gold foil point is a atomic number 2 tankful .
The lander was not wholly on its side , as originally thought . It was “ more upright than we ab initio thought , ” Steve Altemus , chief executive policeman and co - founder of Intuitive Machines , enounce in the briefing . “ We did land upright , we captured data point , then we tilted over slowly in about two second and occur to rest either on the polar He armoured combat vehicle or a computing gadget shelf and were able to communicate all six [ NASA ] payloads back , plus all six commercial payloads . ”
The lander had communications problems in the first few days of landing place , but the squad finally got a modest amount of information from the various NASA freight on dining table . “ alternatively of ending up with a few bytes of datum , which was the baseline goal for us , we ’ve got over 50 megabyte of information , ” suppose Sue Lederer , CLPS project scientist at NASA Johnson .
The mission had a variety of challenges , including a drift in the control of the ballistic capsule using its engines , which had to be patch , and end up in the unseasonable orbit before landing , which required a correction maneuver . Despite trouble with the landing and communications , however , NASA and Intuitive Machines say that the mission was a success . Altemus described the mission as a pathfinder and stressed that “ the whole thought of this missionary work was not to live as long as you could on the airfoil . This mission was stand for as a scout . ”
