Odysseus
goes out.
The long night reaches the lunar south pole and the space module launched by the private company Intuitive Machines runs out of power.
Odie,
as the company employees have baptized him, has starred in the first American arrival on the Moon since the end of the Apollo program in 1972. In addition, he has made history by becoming the first artifact from a private company to reach the natural satellite. from the earth.
Although it has had something of an eventful odyssey, the US space agency (NASA) and the company itself consider that the mission has been a success.
Due to the fall he suffered when landing on the moon,
Odysseus
goes out prematurely, but scientists are still confident in the possibility of waking him up in a few weeks.
Those responsible for Intuitive Machines and NASA employees who have worked on the mission stated this this Wednesday at a press conference at the Johnson Space Center in Houston (Texas).
In it they took stock of Intuitive Machines' first trip to the Moon, the IM-1 mission, which will be followed by others in the coming months.
“We have carried out a very successful mission,” said Steve Altemus, CEO of Intuitive Machines.
Altemus has insisted time and time again that the important thing about this mission was to reach the Moon, achieve the soft landing - although it was not that soft -, establish communication and carry out various tests.
“These objectives are met, so in our opinion it is an unmitigated success,” he stated.
The company has also appreciated that the deep space liquid methane and liquid oxygen propulsion system designed by the company has been successfully tested in flight.
Altemus has downplayed the fact that the duration (at least the initial one) has been shortened by the lunar crash.
And he praised the resistance of the lander: “What a magnificent job that robust and brave lander did, all the way to the Moon and then on the surface to return so much data, information and science to NASA and our commercial companies.
It's just an incredible testament to how robust and, as someone said, beastly that little spaceship is.
“We are very happy,” he said euphorically as soon as the appearance began.
The module has withstood less energy than initially projected, but somewhat more than what was feared a couple of days ago.
This Wednesday it was already running out of power.
"We'll put
Odie
to sleep and hope he wakes up in the next two or three weeks for the developmental test goal which is actually to see if we can, when the sun shines on the solar panel again, get a signal back from this module." landing and so we are excited about that point,” added Altemus.
The possibility of him waking up is open, but by no means guaranteed.
The Japanese module that reached the Moon a few weeks ago and could not deploy its solar panels due to having fallen on its side, managed to generate energy last weekend.
Odysseus
is not specially designed to withstand the frigid temperatures of the long lunar night.
Extreme cold could crack electronic components and kill batteries.
Mission director Tim Crain said it's not known if he will wake up.
Sue Lederer, a NASA scientist, was optimistic: “He is a very fighting guy.
“I have confidence in
Odie
right now.”
Whether it wakes up or not, Intuitive Machines has achieved what no other company has achieved until now, despite some failed attempts.
Altemus has especially celebrated it: “What we have done in the process of this mission is to radically change the economics of the moon landing.
We have opened the door to a strong and prosperous lunar economy in the future.
"It's really a point in history that we should celebrate, as we move toward later missions around the Moon."
Steve Altemus and mission director Tim Crain, chief technology officer at Intuitive Machines, have reviewed some of the setbacks that arose during the lunar journey.
The laser guidance for landing was physically disabled.
Someone deactivated it before takeoff so that the laser would not cause accidental damage, and thus it reached the Moon.
There was no way to restore its operation.
For this reason, a Lidar-based descent and landing sensor had to be used, an instrument that works according to the same principles as radar, but with a laser, which the device carried as an experimental payload.
To install it, the module made an additional orbit around the Moon.
The experiment worked, but not completely.
Odysseus
missed the desired flat terrain by 1.5 kilometers and ended up at a higher elevation than anticipated.
As a result, it descended too quickly and with a displacement not only vertically but also laterally.
Therefore, he hit the ground harder than his paws could tolerate, Altemus explained.
The four-meter lander momentarily remained upright, with the engine running, before slowly falling onto a slight slope.
This damaged or hid some of the antennas, which have been able to transmit less data than originally planned, but without preventing the sent mechanisms from being tested.
During the trip there were other failures and unforeseen events (up to 11 have been reported by those responsible for Intuitive Machines and NASA) that the engineers solved as best they could.
“A soft landing on the Moon is a great achievement,” Joel Kearns, deputy administrator for exploration in NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said at the press conference.
“This mission is pioneering.
“It can be considered a flight test.”
Sue Lederer, a Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) project scientist at NASA's Johnson Center, said agency teams were still analyzing the data but were satisfied with what they were receiving.
“All payloads have achieved some level of their objectives,” she said.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson calls the mission a success, as all six of the space agency's experiments on the lander were still running Wednesday morning.
“There is a big difference between landing a crew and landing a bunch of instruments,” he said at another event, according to statements reported by the Associated Press.
NASA was the main customer, with half of the 12 payloads carried by
Odysseus
.
It has paid Intuitive Machines $118 million to take its work instruments to the Moon.
It is a stereoscopic camera to observe the plume of dust that rises during landing;
a radio receiver to measure the effects of charged particles on radio signals;
an experiment with autonomous navigation capabilities to support future surface and orbital operations;
an array of eight retroreflectors that should serve as a permanent position marker on the Moon for decades;
the Lidar-based descent and landing sensor that was used as an emergency and a meter that uses radio waves to determine how much propellant fuel remains in the tanks in a low-gravity environment.
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