The Odysseus module, the first American spacecraft to land on the Moon after the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, fell upon landing and ended up on its side, making communications difficult, the company Intuitive Machines said.
Company president Steve Altemus admitted on Friday that one of the module’s six feet got stuck on the lunar surface, causing Odysseus to fall on its side and, quite possibly, against a rock.
“So far, we have a lot of operational capacity,” despite the setback, Altemus told reporters.
But the leader of Intuitive Machines said that some antennas ended up pointed at the lunar surface, limiting the ability of flight controllers to obtain data.
The antennas had been positioned on top of the landing module, 4.3 meters high, to facilitate communications in the Moon’s south pole, a mountainous region, full of craters and with little sunlight.
Still, Altemus said Odysseus should be able to transmit scientific data and images to Earth.
Odysseus landed on Thursday in the Malpert A crater, around 300 kilometers from the lunar south pole, where it will remain approximately seven days until ‘night falls’ in this region and the machine becomes inoperative.
The module, which carries NASA experiments, arrived on the lunar surface seven days after taking off from the Kennedy Space Center, at Cape Canaveral, in Florida (southeast), powered by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
This was also the first private North American spacecraft to reach Earth’s natural satellite, a feat achieved by only five countries.
Another company tried last month, but never reached the Moon, and the lander crashed back to Earth.
2024-02-24 08:37:55
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