Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander touched down on the moon Thursday after a historic, nail-biting descent following a last-minute navigation sensor malfunction, becoming the first U.S.-built spacecraft to stick a moon landing in more than 50 years and the first ever by a private company.
After delaying the final descent by one orbit to press an experimental NASA navigation sensor into service — and to test hurriedly-written software patches to route its data to the lander’s flight computer — Odysseus settled to a touchdown at 6:23 p.m. EST near a crater known as Malapert A some 186 miles from the south pole of the moon.
But the spacecraft’s condition was not immediately known. Engineers at Intuitive Machines’ Nova control center in Houston expected it to take up to two minutes or so to re-establish communications after landing, but the expected signal was not immediately found.
This gives hope that maybe I’ll see man step foot on the moon in my lifetime.
Check out the NASA’s artemis missions. The goal is to put people back on the moon in 2026.
That’s when we’ll orbit the moon. 2032 is the earliest we’ll step foot.
Over the course of about 30 days, the Artemis III astronauts will travel to lunar orbit, where two crew members will descend to the surface and spend approximately a week near the South Pole of the Moon conducting new science before returning to lunar orbit to join their crew for the journey back to Earth.
Artemis 3, no earlier than Sept 2026
You’re dreaming too small. You’re almost definitely gonna live to see humans walk on the moon. And since you couldn’t have been born before the early 70s, then it’s reasonable that you might live to see civilians on the moon! And you yourself might even wind up in space!
either you are delusional or those are going to be very wealthy civilians
One of the major parts of the current Artemis missions is to put a lunar base in orbit and have construction of lunar hab modules be based out of that orbital base
There’s no way they’re not going to use at least some civilian contractors for at least some parts of that mission when we’re already using civvy work for making the damn rockets
Why tho?
I have a thing for gourmet cheeses
How’s the signal? Did they get that fixed?
They updated the article:
Finally, a faint signal was picked up by a communications antenna in the United Kingdom, indicating the spacecraft had, in fact, survived the touchdown.
“What we can confirm, without a doubt, is our equipment is on the surface of the moon, and we are transmitting,” Mission Director Tim Crain told the flight control team. “So congratulations, IM team! We’ll see how much more we can get from that.”
And then further down:
But a detailed assessment of the health of the spacecraft and its payloads awaited analysis of telemetry. Finally, two hours after touchdown, the company reported that “after troubleshooting communications, flight controllers have confirmed Odysseus is upright and starting to send data. Right now, we are working to downlink the first images from the lunar surface.”
After another update, the lander is not in fact upright. They were looking at old data when they said that.
Oh no!!! I’ll have to re-read the article 🫤
Not yet, the Q&A they just did said that the problem was that the lander kept switching between two sets of different dishes, constantly resetting the comms system. Looks like the problem was caused because two of the dishes are facing the ground (it tipped over).
Woah that’s awesome, I’m gonna have to follow this story
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And so, the trashification of lunar surface begins.
