“
Odysseus
is alive and well.”
The company Intuitive Machines launched that message this Friday, but the need to insist on it and the lack of photographs and other evidence about the state of the lander indicated that something was not quite right.
Finally, the company's CEO, Steve Altemus, has admitted that the device "caught its foot on the surface, tilted" and landed on its side.
This is the first time that a private company has managed to land a device on the Moon.
The mission has also marked the return of the United States to the satellite half a century after the Apollo program.
It has been a historic success, but something less.
At the time of the moon landing, there was already a long wait that presaged that something was wrong.
Even so, the company claimed victory and this Friday assured that the flight controllers communicate and order the vehicle device to download scientific data and that the lander has good telemetry and solar charging.
“We continue to learn more about vehicle-specific information (Lat/Lon), general health and attitude (orientation),” the company clarified when announcing that Altemus would provide further explanations.
Atemus said this Friday in a telematic press conference that the lander has landed “near or at its planned landing site.”
The device landed in a dangerous region for a lunar landing, full of craters and cliffs, but considered of high value, because it is believed that these permanently shadowed craters contain frozen water, near the Malapert A crater, 260 kilometers from the lunar south pole. .
The crater is named in honor of the 17th century Belgian astronomer Charles Malapert.
There, near where India has already successfully landed, it is intended to exploit the gigantic resource of water ice for future space exploration.
Astronauts visiting the Moon in the future could use the ice in these craters for drinking water, oxygen, and even fuel.
Previous US missions reached the equatorial lunar regions.
One of NASA's experiments was launched when the lander's navigation system failed in the final hours before touchdown.
The lander made an extra loop around the Moon so it could switch over to NASA's laser system at the last minute.
Another experiment, a cube with four cameras, was to take off 30 seconds before landing to capture images of Odysseus' landing.
But Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University's EagleCam was deliberately turned off during the final descent due to the navigation switch and remained attached to the lander.
Embry-Riddle's Troy Henderson said his team will try to free the EagleCam in the coming days so it can photograph the lander from about 25 feet away.
With lingering uncertainty about Odysseus' position on the Moon, "getting that final image of the lander on the surface remains an incredibly important task for us," Henderson told the Associated Press.
After having skyrocketed on the stock market with the moon landing this Thursday, the shares of Intuitive Machines plummeted on the stock market this Friday outside the usual session hours, with falls of more than 30%, when it was learned that not everything had gone well.
[Breaking news.
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