When you buy through tie on our site , we may gain an affiliate commissioning . Here ’s how it run .
Update : On Monday ( Feb. 26 ) officials with Intuitive Machines said that the Odysseus lander is expected to go out of mightiness andshut down by Tuesday morning , several days short of the hebdomad of operations that was previously expected . The lander was not design to survive lunar night , and may not arouse up again after lose magnate . The first individual space vehicle to ever land onthe moondid so with a case - plant , an update from its companionship bring out .
The Odysseus lander , built by Houston - ground company Intuitive Machines , set ashore at the lunar south poleat 6:23 p.m. Eastern Time on Feb. 22 , making it the first U.S. lander to park on the Sun Myung Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972 .
A wide-field photo of the moon’s surface taken from one of Odysseus' onboard cameras.
The lander ’s descent , however , was far from smooth - sailing — after a malfunction with the lasers the space vehicle was using to land , party engineers desperately update aNASAbackup optical maser that guided it to the moon ’s surface .
It turn over out that despite the quick - fix , the 13 - metrical unit - tall ( 4 time ) , six - legged lander " caught a foot in the surface and tip , " Intuitive Machines CEOSteve Altemussaid in an update . Yet landing on its side has only partly affected the succeeder of the spacecraft ’s missionary station .
" The fomite is stable , near or at our designate landing site . We do have communications with the lander , " Altemus say during a news conference on Sunday ( Feb. 25 ) . " If you think back from Apollo days , there was n’t one mission that went utterly perfectly so you have to be adaptable . "
Related:‘Everything has changed since Apollo ' : Why landing on the moonshine is still unbelievably hard in 2024
The lander ’s off - kelter place is n’t idealistic , but it can still officiate , with some solar panels pointed at the Lord’s Day and some of its antenna guide at footing stations on Earth , Altemas say . But other antennas are less well positioned .
" We do have antennas , however , that are charge at the [ moon ’s ] surface , and those antenna are unusable for transmitting back to Earth , " he add up . " And so , that really is a limiter . Our power to pass along and get the right data down , so that we get everything we need for the missionary work , I recall , is the most compromise from being on its side . "
NASA send off six cargo on table Odysseus , including a set of cameras designed to consider how synodic month dust is displaced by ballistic capsule landings . Even with the spacecraft tipped , these cameras should be able-bodied to collect data until lunar Nox ( the 14 days of darkness when this side of the moon is faced forth from the sun ) , which falls toward the end of the hebdomad .
Odysseus launch atop aSpaceXFalcon 9 garden rocket from NASA ’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral , Florida on Feb. 15 and entered lunar reach on Feb. 21 . It complete one tight loop above the lunar surface before slowing for landing with a few well - time locomotive engine bursts .
— The moon is shrinking , causing landslides and moonquakes on the nose where NASA want to build up its first lunar settlement
— Elon Musk ’s SpaceX could plunge a private lunar month lander within week
— Pinpoint landing : NASA orbiter spies Japan ’s revive SLIM moon lander on lunar surface
The lander arrived close to the Malapert A crater at the lunar south pole . The realm has long ride scientist with the bearing of weewee ice , which could one day bebroken down into atomic number 1 and oxygen for rocket fuel , according to NASA .
The Odysseus delegacy is part of NASA ’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services syllabus , which the space delegacy show to incentivize the ontogenesis of private - sphere lunar landers . NASA specify to contract these company to delight cargo and scientific equipment to the moon .
Odysseus ’s lurch is far from the first recent lunar misadventure , and almost certainly the least serious : five of the last nine moon landing attempts stop in failure , including last calendar month ’s private Peregrine missionary station , in which the U.S. craftstranded in spaceandpromptly crash to Earthdue an oxidizer leakage .
And Japan ’s SLIM lander made a platter - breakingly accurate landing on the lunation last month , but , just like Odysseus , italso face - planted as it bring down . Fortunately , SLIM managed to survive its first freeze lunar dark , briefly awakening to crack fresh photosof the synodic month before investigator turn it off again to keep its intruments from overheating in the abrasive lunar daytime .
