The joint press conference of NASA and Intuitive Machines confirmed that the Odysseus lunar spacecraft will be powered off before 12 noon today (Vietnam time).
At a joint press conference on the afternoon of February 28 (US time, corresponding to the morning of February 29, Vietnam time), NASA and Intuitive Machines said that America’s newest lunar spacecraft did not simply stumble and fall, but One leg was completely broken, or maybe multiple legs.
The mission operations team reported that problems with navigation equipment were the main cause of a series of problems later, according to Space.com.
Even though it successfully used the alternative of landing with NASA’s specialized LiDAR system being tested, the Odysseus also landed faster than expected, landing on an area of land at a higher altitude than the target landing site. .
“The landing gear takes up most of the load and we broke one or two legs, probably the landing gear legs,” admitted Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus.
After standing upright for about 2 seconds on terrain with a 12-degree slope, the lunar spacecraft tilted. Due to accidentally resting his head on a block of rock, it was not too tilted, but still enough to carry out missions in a limited way.
Another photo shows the ship tilting – Photo: X
The operations team tried to make the most of Odysseus’s remaining energy, when its solar panels were in darkness. For example, they transmit science data back to Earth using low-gain antennas instead of high-power antennas atop the lander.
One of the scientific payloads Odysseus carried was the EagleCam. On February 28, this device was successfully deployed, located 4 meters from the ship but is still not working to take photos of the ship and some other things as planned. The team is working on fixing the problem.
In addition, Odysseus also carried 11 other scientific payloads, mostly from NASA, including the LiDAR system that was used during landing.
This lunar spacecraft will be powered off on February 28 US time, or before 12 noon Vietnamese time today.
It will have to face “death” which is a moonlit night with deep negative temperatures lasting 2 weeks, which may or may not destroy electronic devices on the ship.
All that spacecraft manufacturer Intuitive Machines and partner NASA can wait for is to hope it doesn’t break down and “resurrects” after 2 weeks like Japan’s SLIM spacecraft.