Odysseus: A privately owned spacecraft to reach the Moon in a cold, cold weather for landers, rovers, and astronauts
This is the first privately owned spacecraft to achieve its goal after the Astrobotic Peregrine lander, launched by United Launch Alliance last month, failed to reach the Moon.
The incoming lunar night will force the lander to shut down after 14 days because it isn’t built to tolerate such cold weather. Additional payloads from other, private customers aboard the lander include an “EagleCam” CubeSat camera system built by students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida, and an art project by Jeff Koons containing 125 miniature Moon sculptures.
Odysseus launched on 15 February from Cape Canaveral in Florida, and headed directly for the Moon. It transmitted images of the Earth and the Moon after it fired its engine several times to set it on the correct path. It entered lunar orbit on 21 February, initially circling 92 kilometres above the surface before making its landing attempt.
It has a laser retroreflector array to help other spacecraft make precision landings and a radio navigation beacon to provide geolocation data to landers, rovers, and eventually astronauts.
Odysseus’s failure on the moon as determined by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Eagle Cam
Until Thursday, the U.S. had not landed on the moon since Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt closed out NASA’s famed moon-landing program in December 1972. NASA’s new effort to return astronauts to the moon is named Artemis after Apollo’s mythological twin sister. The Artemis crew landing is going to happen at the earliest.
There will be another week of operations on the moon before lunar nightfall, which is nine or 10 days at most.
Troy Henderson said his team will try to release EagleCAM in the next few days so it can take a picture of the lander.
Another experiment, a cube with four cameras, was supposed to pop off 30 seconds before touchdown to capture pictures of Odysseus’ landing. During the final descent, the navigation switch on the landers caused Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s EagleCam to be powered off.
Launched last week from Florida, Odysseus took an extra lap around the moon Thursday to allow time for the last-minute switch to NASA’s laser system, which saved the day, officials noted.
One of the NASA experiments was pressed into service when the lander’s navigation system did not kick in. The problem was caught in advance when the company attempted to improve the lander’s angle of travel. Otherwise, flight controllers would not have discovered the failure until it was too late, just five minutes before touchdown.
The Odysseus Mission in Malapert A: The First Private Landing Mission of the Moon near the Moon’s South Pole
NASA funded Odysseus’ mission and had experiments on board. The program meant to jump-start the lunar economy paid NASA $118 million.
With Thursday’s touchdown, Intuitive Machines became the first private business to pull off a moon landing, a feat previously achieved by only five countries. Japan was the latest country to score a landing, but its lander also ended up on its side last month.
The spaceship landed 300 kilometers from the Moon’s south pole near the Malapert A crater. NASA is interested in the Moon’s south pole because the region’s dirt and shadowy craters might contain ice that could provide fuel and other resources for future lunar explorers. Most lunar landers have visited the Moon’s equatorial regions; the only mission that has landed near the south pole is India’s Chandrayaan-3, which touched down last August.
But some antennas were pointed toward the surface, limiting flight controllers’ ability to get data down, Altemus said. The landers had high masts to facilitate communications at the hilly, cratered and shadowed south polar region.
The Return of the U.S. Lunar Relic Robot Odysseus after Its Decay into a Rock
Intuitive Machines initially believed its six-footed lander, Odysseus, was upright after Thursday’s touchdown. Altemus claimed that the craft caught a foot in the surface, falling onto its side and leaning against a rock. He said it was coming in too fast and may have snapped a leg.
A private U.S. moon landers tipped over on its way back to Earth, but the company said Friday it was fine.
The exact state of the spacecraft remained unclear immediately after its landing, which occurred at 5:23 p.m. Houston time. It sent a faint signal back to mission control, indicating that at least some of it had survived the touchdown. the control room burst into cheers after the mission director said that Odysseus had found its new home.
“The US has returned to the Moon,” said NASA administrator Bill Nelson. “Today is a day that shows the power and promise of NASA’s commercial partnerships.”
The first images from the lunar surface are expected within a few hours of the landing, depending on how communications with the spacecraft go. If Odysseus’s scientific payloads check out successfully, they could collect data for up to seven days, until night falls at the landing site and there is no more solar power left for operations.
SLIM landing on the Moon: Spacecraft failures and fuel choices for space missions with methane-based propellants (the case of Odysseus)
Five of the last nine attempts to land on the Moon have failed. The Astrobotic mission which ran out of fuel within hours of launch was one of the failures. But also last month, the Japanese space agency succeeded in putting its SLIM lander near Shioli crater near the Moon’s equator, although the spacecraft landed upside down.
Once the spaceship descended to a lower altitude and moved into a series of maneouvres, it began to investigate the craters and boulders beneath. It navigated towards its intended landing site and fired its engines again to slow its descent, ultimately touching down on the surface.
The first craft to use methane-based rocket fuel in space is Odysseus. Conventional rocket propellants such as those with Kerosene are more efficient and environment friendly than methane-based ones. But they can also be more difficult to work with because they need to remain at ultra-cold temperatures. Several other aerospace companies are planning to use methane fuels in the future.