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- cross-posted to:
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When the lander got down within about 30 km of the lunar surface, they tested the rangefinders again. Worryingly, there was some noise in the readings as the laser bounced off the Moon. However, the engineers had reason to believe that, maybe, the readings would improve as the spacecraft got nearer to the surface.
“Our hope was that the signal to noise would improve as we got closer to the Moon,” said Tim Crain, chief technology officer for Intuitive Machines, speaking to reporters afterward.
It didn’t. The noise remained. And so, to some extent, Athena went down to the Moon blind.
After Athena landed, the engineers in mission control could talk to the spacecraft, and they were able to generate some power from its solar arrays. But precisely where it was, or how it lay on the ground, they could not say a few hours later.
Based on a reading from an inertial measurement unit inside the vehicle, most likely Athena is lying on its side. This is the same fate Odysseus met last year, when it skidded into the Moon, broke a leg, and toppled over.
“I would like to get a picture,” Altemus said. “I would like to get more data before we can determine the orientation.”
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The money shot:
Their update states that their batteries are depleted, they don’t expect them to recharge and that the mission is now over.
Yup, that lander is on its side. Damn, that sucks.
Maybe the moon’s on its side
Yeah. Given that they kept the engine running at idle for a while, I was half expecting to see a trail. I’d like to know the dynamics of the touchdown. I’m sure they’ll figure out most of it but they probably prioritised payload data over images of the touchdown.
Commiserations to IM. Really unlucky to fix issues from their first mission then end up with the same, if not a worse, result.
They should put a robotic arm on the next one so it can lift itself upright after it tips over.
Once they do that the lander will always land upright and the arm will never be needed.
Deterrence
Even if simply the arms presence causes the lander to land upright, I would argue that the arm is still “needed” :)
Didn’t they do that with one of the early Mars landers?
I recall there was one in a bag of balloons shaped like a tetrahedron. I think they ended up not needing to use the pusher mechanism because they essentially rolled a nat 4.
Spirit and Opportunity used the airbag landing system. The sides of the tetrahedron could open with enough force to right the platform no matter the orientation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover#Airbags
Doing that on the moon wouldn’t be very mass efficient. It’d need a skycrane part outside the airbags. Much more efficient to land the right way up.
Here’s hoping ispace can land Hakuto-R number 2 in June without incident. 🤞
The article’s title is something … 😂 On the other hand it’s such a shame the mission went, presumably, wrong
Haven’t seen Eric write about the SpaceX explosion yet. 🤔
Dude, it happened just a few hours ago. The guy has to sleep at same point, right? He did tweet about it, but it’ll probably be a day or so before he publishes a full article.
https://x.com/SciGuySpace/status/1897793984509984974
Catching a falling rocket is still damned impressive. Just a remarkable engineering feat. Congratulations to the 1,000s of engineers at SpaceX who broke their minds working on that.
https://x.com/SciGuySpace/status/1897795132222537778
The loss of Starship on ascent during the second flight in a row is clearly a serious setback for SpaceX.
Yep. He isn’t critical of SpaceX at all. Thats why.
