Moon Mishap: Odysseus Craft's Uneven Landing Leads to Dormant State
US space news: Odysseus sits idle on moon after sloppy landing
Odysseus, the first U.S. spacecraft to land on the moon in 50 years, lost power and fell inert on Thursday as it entered a freezing lunar night, concluding its primary mission after a botched landing a week earlier that hampered operations and scientific aims.
NASA's $118 million Odysseus was built and flown by Texas-based Intuitive Machines, which sent a last 'farewell signal' to its ground control crew before dusk near the moon's south pole.
"Goodnight, Odie. We hope to hear from you again "Intuitive wrote in an online update, calling the spacecraft by its engineers' moniker for a lander they claimed was stronger than predicted.
Intuitive said its researchers will programme Odysseus to "phone home" to Houston if it received enough solar power to revive in three weeks with the next dawn over its landing spot.
The corporation originally predicted that Odysseus would run out of battery power Wednesday night, following its sixth full day on the moon, when the sun set low on the lunar horizon and solar energy regeneration slowed.
On Thursday morning, Intuitive stated Odysseus was "still kicking," and flight controllers will try to download a last stream of data sent 239,000 miles (385,000km) to Earth before communication was lost.
Intuitive's shares, which almost quadrupled and then fell in dramatic swings throughout the mission, stayed up 20% from before the launch, giving the business a $600 million market worth.
The hexagonal Nova-C-class lander, which stands 13 feet (4 m) tall, was launched on Feb. 15 from NASA's Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It reached lunar orbit six days later.
The spacecraft reached the lunar surface last Thursday after an 11th-hour navigational mistake and nail-biting descent that culminated with Odysseus grabbing one of its foot and landing steeply tilted, hampering its functions.
Human mistake caused the navigational difficulty, according to Intuitive Machines. Flight preparation crews failed to manually release a safety switch before launch, preventing the vehicle's laser-guided range finders from activating, requiring flight engineers to quickly find an alternative during lunar orbit.
The last-minute workaround certainly averted a crash-landing but may have caused the vehicle to land askew, grabbing a foot on the uneven terrain and resting at a 30-degree angle, company officials said.
On Wednesday, a photo showed the spacecraft landing with broken landing gear.
The corporation said that two of the lander's antennas were damaged and its solar panels were facing the incorrect way.
Despite communication issues with the lander and solar battery issues, NASA says it extracted data from all six research packages launched by Odysseus.
Intuitive and NASA officials praised the science and the "soft" lunar landing, the first by a commercial space spacecraft, as a milestone in lunar exploration.
Odysseus was the first U.S. spacecraft to descend to the moon's surface manually since Apollo's 1972 mission.
It was the first under NASA's Artemis programme, which plans to send several more private robot landers on the moon for research scouting before humans return later this decade.
Only four countries—the former Soviet Union, China, India, and Japan, whose lander toppled over last month—have made a "soft" lunar landing.
The US is the only nation to send astronauts to the moon. Reporting by Joey Roulette in Washington and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; editing by Andrew Heavens, Lisa Shumaker, and Lincoln Feast