Los Angeles: The firm behind the spacecraft, Intuitive Machines, announced on Monday that flight control engineers anticipate losing contact with the private US lunar lander Odysseus on Tuesday, ending the mission five days after its sideways impact.
How much scientific data may be lost as a result of Odysseus’s abbreviated life remained to be discovered. Odysseus would have ordinarily functioned on the moon for seven to ten days, based on projections from the corporation and its largest customer, NASA.
The company’s prediction of an early mission termination coincided with fresh information regarding testing expediencies and human error that caused the spacecraft’s laser-guided range finders to malfunction in midair before to last Thursday’s landing.
According to a representative of Intuitive Machines, the company decided not to test-fire the laser system before to launch in order to save money and time when doing pre-flight inspections of Odysseus at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This choice resulted in the loss of the range finders.
It’s true that there were things we could have done to test and fire it. The company’s head of navigation systems, Mike Hansen, stated in an interview on Saturday that “they would have been very time-consuming and very costly.” “Therefore, as a company, we recognized and accepted that risk.”
The laser range finders, which were intended to provide altitude and forward velocity information to Odysseus’ autonomous navigation system, were rendered useless on Friday by Intuitive Machines, which revealed that the company’s engineers had forgotten to unlock the safety button on the lasers prior to their launch on February 15. Like a safety switch on a gun, the safety lock can only be turned off by hand.
Only a few hours before the final descent, a range-finder malfunction was discovered, forcing flight controllers to devise an experimental workaround to prevent what could have been a disastrous crash-landing.
Restricted solar power
The business has not yet determined whether the improvised navigational solution, which used an experimental system provided by NASA aboard the lander, would have contributed to the spacecraft’s sideways landing, according to Hansen, the engineer who created the software “patch” that resolved the issue.
During the initial news conference following the landing on Friday, the company reported that during the final descent, Odysseus grabbed the underside of one of its six landing legs on the irregular lunar surface. As a result, it toppled over and came to a horizontal rest, seemingly supported by a boulder.
Executives at Intuitive Machines conjectured that the spacecraft’s forward speed upon landing—roughly twice as fast as anticipated—might have contributed to its stumble. However, it was still unclear if using the original laser range finders would have had an impact.
Anyway, the amount of sunshine that Odysseus’ sideways position allowed its solar panels to receive—which is essential for charging its batteries—was significantly reduced. Additionally, the corporation said on Friday that two of its antennae were pointing toward the ground, obstructing communications with the lander.
Executives at Intuitive Machines stated at the time that their technical teams would require additional time to evaluate the impact on the mission as a whole. The Houston-based corporation stated in an online update on Monday that the flight controllers planned to continue gathering data until the lander’s solar panels were completely dark.
