AFP CEO Steve Altemus of Intuitive Machines demonstrates how the lander fell over last week
NOS Nieuws•vandaag, 00:26
The American lunar lander Odysseus, which fell over when landing on the moon’s surface last week, will stop working sooner than expected. The company behind the first ever commercial moon mission, Intuitive Machines, says it expects to lose contact with the Odysseus within a day.
The company and the American space agency NASA previously estimated that Odysseus had enough energy to last until at least Thursday, ideally even until next weekend. After that, the mission would end anyway, because too little sunlight falls on the panels of the device.
First since 1972
When landing on the moon, Odysseus probably caught one of his legs on an unevenness in the lunar landscape, causing the lander to fall over. The solar collectors of the device are now not pointed at the sun, and part of the antennas cannot communicate with the earth. So data transfer is now limited.
Odysseus was the first American spacecraft to land on the moon since NASA’s last Apollo mission in 1972, when astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt set foot on the surface. The lander now also has six NASA instruments on board. The mission is important for that organization because it wants to use images of the landing for future manned moon landings.
The Odysseus also included works of art in digital form, including by the Dutchman Bram Reijnders:
This Dutchman’s work is now also on the moon
2024-02-26 23:26:09
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