For the first time in more than half a century, an American-made spacecraft has made a soft landing on the moon.
There was great drama and much intrigue Thursday night as Intuitive Machines attempted to land the Odysseus spacecraft in a small crater not far from the moon’s south pole. About 20 minutes after landing, NASA declared it a success, but some questions remained about the lander’s condition and its orientation. why? Because while Odysseus was calling home, the signal was weak.
But given what the spacecraft and its developer, Houston-based Intuitive Machines, went through early Thursday, it was quite a miracle that Odysseus made it.
lose one’s way
The landing plan was delayed by about two hours because mission controllers had to send a hastily cobbled together last-minute software patch to the lander, which was still in orbit around the moon. The last thing a vehicle operator wants to do is patch a spacecraft’s software right before the spacecraft makes its most critical move. But Intuitive Machines was desperate.
The company noticed early Thursday that its navigation lasers and cameras were not working. These rangefinders are essential for two functions: terrain-relative navigation and hazard-relative navigation during landing. These two modes allow Odysseus’s flight computer to determine exactly where it will be during descent by taking a large number of images and comparing them to the known lunar terrain, and to find a safe landing spot. Helps identify hazardous materials underneath.
Without these rangefinders, Odysseus intended to land on the moon face-first. Fortunately, this mission carried a large scientific payload. As part of the commercial lunar program, NASA is paying approximately $118 million to transport six scientific payloads to the lunar surface.
One of these payloads happened to be the Navigation Doppler Lidar Experiment, a 15-kilogram package containing three small cameras. NASA sought to use this his NDL payload to test technology that could be used to improve navigation systems on future moon landing attempts.
Odysseus’ only chance was to somehow utilize two of the NDL experiment’s three cameras, one for terrain-relative navigation and the other for hazard-relative navigation. . So the software was quickly written and shipped to the lander. This was a true MacGyver movie. But will it work?
new home
The Odysseus lander began its descent from a circular orbit 57 miles (92 kilometers) above the moon’s surface, 1 hour and 13 minutes before scheduled landing. The lander began a powered descent using its main engines powered by liquid oxygen and methane 11 minutes before touchdown in this timeline. During these last critical minutes, Odysseus’ improvised terrain-relative navigation camera scanned the surface for rocks and other hazards to ensure a safe landing spot.
After touchdown, mission controllers knew it could take a minute or two to receive a good signal from the lander, which was relaying the signal to a large satellite dish on Earth. . First he one minute, then he two minutes, then he five minutes passed, and an increasingly uncomfortable silence ensued in the Intuitive Machines mission control room. there is nothing.
Finally, after 10 minutes, mission director Tim Crane yelled that the lander was sending a faint signal back to Earth.
“We’re not dead yet,” said Klein, the company’s co-founder.
