Intuitive Machines’ lunar lander Odysseus overcame a number of obstacles during its epic descent last week, including one or more broken legs.
The 14-foot (4.3-meter) Odysseus settled into the gray soil near the moon’s south pole on Thursday, Feb. 22, making the first American lunar landing since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
However, Odysseus’ goal was a bit harsh. Due to a problem with the navigation equipment, the six-legged lander touched down faster than expected on a patch of lunar floor higher than the target landing site.
“So we hit harder and kind of skidded along the way,” Intuitive Machines CEO and co-founder Steve Altemus said at a press conference today (Feb. 28).
“The landing gear took most of the load and we probably broke one or two of the landing gear legs,” he added.
Relating to: Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lunar lander beams home first photos from the lunar surface
Odysseus sat upright for approximately two seconds on terrain with a slope of approximately 12 degrees. The lander then began to roll over, but eventually came to rest about 30 degrees off horizontal, Altemus said. It is held slightly off the ground by one of its tanks or other pieces of equipment.
This orientation was far from ideal. For example, it prevented Odysseus from using its high-gain antenna to communicate with Earth and put the top solar array in shadow. But the Intuitive Machines made the best of the situation, beaming home images and science data using Odysseus’ low-gain antennas.
Today we looked at some of those photos for the first time. One of them shows the moment of landing, and a broken landing leg is clearly visible.
“This image shows that Odysseus’ lander is fulfilling its primary duty, absorbing initial contact with the lunar surface to preserve mission integrity. Meanwhile, the lander’s liquid methane and liquid oxygen engine is still throttled, providing stability. The company adheres to these two views.” “This image enabled Odysseus to gently rest on the lunar surface, preserving his ability to retrieve scientific data.” Intuitive Machines wrote: Publish today on X highlighted this photo.
In another X post today, Intuitive Machines shared a selfie Odysseus took yesterday (February 27).
“Previous attempts to send photographs from the landing and the days that followed yielded unusable images. After successfully transmitting the image to Earth, flight controllers obtained additional information about Odysseus’ location on the lunar surface.” the company wrote.
If everything had gone perfectly on the day of the landing, such images could have been complemented by astonishing and unprecedented shots of Odysseus descending from the lunar surface.
The spacecraft was carrying a payload called EagleCam, built by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University students. The camera system was designed to be deployed at an altitude of about 100 feet (30 meters) and then take photographs of the final stage of the descent. However, the mission team decided to keep EagleCam on board due to Odysseus’ navigation problems.
Altemus said EagleCam was finally deployed today. He is currently standing about 4 meters away from Odysseus, but there is no image from the device yet. Altemus said that the EagleCam team is trying to fix the problem, “we’ll see what happens next.”
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EagleCam is one of 12 payloads on Odysseus, which launched on February 15 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Six of these payloads are science experiments or technology demonstrations that NASA has placed on board through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program (CLPS).
NASA officials said the agency received data from all five of these operating vehicles. (The other is a passive laser reflector array designed to help other spacecraft navigate.)
“We are all very excited now that we have so much data from the lunar surface,” Sue Lederer, CLPS project scientist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, said during today’s briefing.
This data port will shut down today when the Intuitive Machines power down Odysseus (affectionately known as Odie) before the long, cold lunar night. (The moon takes about 27 Earth days to rotate around its axis, so each lunar night lasts about two weeks.)
Odysseus’ surface mission was expected to last only about a week. So the coming night could kill the lander, breaking its electronics and batteries — or maybe not.
“Also, we didn’t know if we could handle it, and we overcame challenge after challenge after fight,” Lederer said. “So I trust Odie at this point. He’s been incredible.”