{"id":16106,"date":"2024-02-27T00:48:13","date_gmt":"2024-02-27T00:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/27\/odysseus-lunar-lander-shares-new-photos-from-its-harrowing-descent\/"},"modified":"2024-02-27T00:48:13","modified_gmt":"2024-02-27T00:48:13","slug":"odysseus-lunar-lander-shares-new-photos-from-its-harrowing-descent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/27\/odysseus-lunar-lander-shares-new-photos-from-its-harrowing-descent\/","title":{"rendered":"Odysseus lunar lander shares new photos from its harrowing descent"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The Odysseus spacecraft has dispatched new images it captured of the lunar surface during the lander\u2019s harrowing approach to the moon. The vehicle softly touched down on the moon on Thursday, becoming the first US-made lander to do so since the Apollo era. <\/p>\n

The grainy images were shared by Intuitive Machines, the company that developed Odysseus, on Monday morning. The company had initially projected that the lander could deliver the first images captured from the lunar surface in the hours after landing, but communicating with the spacecraft has proven challenging. <\/p>\n

The mission team believes Odysseus tripped on the lunar soil and landed on its side, resting on a rock, which may have left some of the vehicle\u2019s antennas pointed in an inopportune direction, Intuitive Machines revealed Friday. <\/p>\n

In its update Monday, the company also said it now expects to lose contact with Odysseus on Tuesday \u2014 days earlier than initially hoped. <\/p>\n

\u201cFlight controllers intend to collect data until the lander\u2019s solar panels are no longer exposed to light,\u201d the company said in the update posted on the social media platform X. \u201cBased on Earth and Moon positioning, we believe flight controllers will continue to communicate with Odysseus until Tuesday morning.\u201d <\/p>\n

At that point, Odysseus will have been operating less than five days on the lunar surface. The company had suggested in previous updates that the lander could function for up to nine days. <\/p>\n

What Odysseus\u2019 images reveal<\/h3>\n

An image released by company Friday showed a view of the moon\u2019s Schomberger crater captured by the spacecraft during its descent. <\/p>\n

The images shared Monday give another glimpse at Odysseus\u2019 trip. <\/p>\n

\u201cOdysseus captured this image approximately 35 seconds after pitching over during its approach to the landing site,\u201d the company said about the clearer of the two photographs from the spacecraft shared Monday on X. <\/p>\n

The spacecraft was expected to \u201cpitch over\u201d \u2014 turning itself upright after moving horizontally through space \u2014 just before landing. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe camera is on the starboard aft-side of the lander in this phase,\u201d the Intuitive Machines post noted, referring to the right rear portion of the vehicle. <\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, which has been circling the moon since 2009, also captured an image of Odysseus\u2019 landing site from afar. <\/p>\n

Intuitive Machines shared Odysseus\u2019 precise location: The spacecraft is sitting at the coordinates 80.13\u00b0S and 1.44\u00b0E on the moon, resting at about 2,579 meters (8,500 feet) in elevation. <\/p>\n

The company says the vehicle landed within 1.5 kilometers (5,000 feet) of its intended landing site, \u201crepresenting the furthest south any vehicle has been able to land on the Moon and establish communication with ground controllers.\u201d <\/p>\n

On board Odysseus are six science and tech demonstration payloads from NASA, which the space agency paid Intuitive Machines \u2014 via a contract worth up to $118 million \u2014 to fly to the lunar surface. <\/p>\n

Odysseus also carried a few pieces of cargo from the private sector, including a work of art and a camera, called EagleCam, that was designed to pop off the lander and capture a \u201cselfie\u201d of the spacecraft during its final descent. <\/p>\n

EagleCam \u2014 which was designed by students at Embry-Riddle University in Florida \u2014 was not ejected, however, because of last-minute navigation issues, which required the lander to rely on experimental hardware from NASA. <\/p>\n

Teams on the ground are still working through how EagleCam might be deployed now that it\u2019s known that Odysseus is lying on its side. <\/p>\n

\u201cTelemetry data confirms that the Embry\u2011Riddle CubeSat is still fully operational, however, and the team now intends to deploy its camera system to capture imagery of the lander in its current state, offering valuable data that could help Intuitive Machines refine its plans moving forward,\u201d Embry-Riddle said in an update on Sunday. <\/p>\n\n

This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Odysseus spacecraft has dispatched new images it captured of the lunar surface during the lander\u2019s harrowing approach to the moon. The vehicle softly touched down on the moon on Thursday, becoming the first US-made lander to do so since the Apollo era. The grainy images were shared by Intuitive Machines, the company that developed <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":16107,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16106","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16106"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16106\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}