NEWSLETTER
Athena did not crash. But what happened to you?
Hours after the 15 -foot high robotic spacecraft reached the surface of the moon, closer to the South Lunar Pole than any spacecraft has been, remained without being clear if its touchdown was soft enough to perform its planned work, or if it collapsed in the process, potentially limiting the scientific achievements of the mission.
“We are trying to evaluate exactly what happened in that last bit,” said Tim Crain, director of technology of Intuitive Machines, at a press conference.
The spacecraft is almost identical to Odysseus, the landing that the company sent to the moon last year. Odysseus was the first vehicle commercially operated in landing successfully on the moon. But that success came with an asterisk when the vehicle collapsed shortly after reaching the ground.
It seems that it could have happened again.
At a press conference after landing, Steve Altemus, executive director of Intuitive Machines, said the spacecraft had sent contradictory data on whether it was stopped or inclined. But a sensor known as an inertial measurement unit offered a track perhaps convincing that Athena was on her side.
While heading to the lunar surface, the laser instruments that measured the altitude of the landing provided loud data, which may have contributed to the failed landing.
Until that final decline, Athena had had much softer performance than Odysseus's land a year ago, said Dr. Crain of intuitive machines. “We expected a completely successful landing,” he said.
Altemus said it was too early to determine how much of the planned mission it could still be saved. The useful loads of Athena include a drill, three small rovers and a hops drone with rocket.
“When we obtain that complete evaluation, we will work closely with NASA's science and technology groups to identify the scientific objectives that are the highest priority,” Altemus said. “And then we will discover how the profile of the mission will see.”
The spacecraft is not generating as much energy as it should, probably because the solar panels are not pointing in the right direction.
The images of the cameras in the spacecraft will help intuitive machines to discover the orientation of the spaceship. Dr. Crain said that the spacecraft was probably placed outside the planned landing zone, but trusted that it was still somewhere in Mons Mouton, a high plateau near the South Pole that Athena should explore.
The images of the NASA lunar recognition orbiter, which will pass on the landing site, could identify Athena's precise location.
It has been a week occupied on the space flight and on the moon. Intuitive Machines was the second company to reach the lunar surface this week, after Firefly Aerospace, another Texas space company, successfully arrived at the moon region of the Moon Crisium of the mare on Sunday morning.
“Every time humanity puts a landing on the moon, it's a good day,” said Dr. Crain.
The main client of both missions is NASA under its commercial program of lunar payload services, which hires private companies to carry useful science and technology charges funded by NASA to the lunar surface. The NASA contract for this mission is worth up to $ 62.5 million, but intuitive machines cannot be paid the total amount.
The actions of Intuitive Machines, which are quoted under the name of Lunr after going over in 2023, fell after reports from the spacecraft problems. His shares fell 20 percent on Thursday.
The main payload in Athena is a simulation for NASA that will extract the lunar soil to be sniffed by a mass spectrometer for frozen water and other compounds. NASA officials said it could be possible for the exercise to work, even if the spacecraft was not vertical. “It doesn't have to be directly where I can deepen,” said Clayton Turner, associate administrator of the NASA Space technology Mission. “There are also other options that we can use.”
Also on board there is a rover of the size of a small dog that will test a network of cell phones from Nokia on the moon, and two smaller rovers, one built by the Massachusetts Institute of technology and the other by a Japanese company. Intuitive machines also planned to try a rocket vehicle called a hopper that could explore places that do not easily reach.
A Landers lunar parade is expected to continue during the rest of the year.
One of those spacecraft is already in space. Ispace of Japan's Resilience Lander was launched in the same Spacex Falcon 9 rocket that sent the Firefly blue ghost on the way. But it is taking a longer and more efficient path in fuel to the moon. It will enter orbit around the moon around May 6 and try to land a month later in Mare Frigoris, or in the cold sea, in the northern hemisphere of the moon.
In autumn, Pittsburgh's astrobotic technology plans to try to reach the moon flying a great landing known as Griffin that will carry a commercial rover designed by Venturi Astrolab of Hawthorne, California, among other loads.
The most intriguing landing is planned by Blue Origin, The Rocket Company started by Jeff Bezos. The land, known as Blue Moon Mark 1, will be the largest spacecraft that has been put on the moon, even larger than those who took NASA's astronauts to the moon during Apollo Moon disbursements more than 50 years ago.
Danielle Kaye Contributed reports.
(Tagstotranslate) Moon
