Amira Shehata wrote Thursday, February 29, 2024 03:00 PM, she defeated Lunar lander Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus encountered a number of obstacles during its landing last week, including one or more broken legs, as the 14-foot-long (4.3-meter) Odysseus rover came to rest on gray dirt near the moon’s south pole last Thursday. (February 22), achieving the first American landing on the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
According to the British newspaper “Daily Mail”, Odysseus’ landing was somewhat rough, and thanks to a problem with the navigation equipment, the six-legged lander landed faster than expected, on a patch of lunar land that was higher than the target landing area.
Lunar selfie
“We landed a little harder, and we kind of slid along the way,” Steve Altemus, CEO and co-founder of Intuitive Machines, said during a press conference.
He added, “The landing gear took the bulk of the payload, and broke one or two of the landing gear legs.”
Moon module landing
Intuitive Machines shared a selfie taken by Odysseus in a post
These images could have been supplemented by stunning and unprecedented footage of Odysseus’ descent from the surface of the moon, if everything had gone perfectly on the day of the landing.
The spacecraft carried a payload called EagleCam, which was built by students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. The camera system is designed to be deployed at an altitude of about 100 feet (30 meters), then capture images of the final stage of the descent.
But the mission team decided to keep EagleCam on board due to navigational problems with Odysseus.
The vehicle with the broken leg
The EagleCam was finally deployed today, currently located about 13 feet (4 meters) from Odysseus, but no images have arrived from the device yet, Altimus said.
EagleCam is one of 12 payloads aboard Odysseus, which launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on February 15.
Six of these payloads include science experiments or technology demonstrations placed on board by NASA through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, program.
