The Odyssey lander remains on the lunar surface in hopes that it will awaken in a few weeks.

Image taken by one of the Odyssey’s onboard cameras – Intuitive Machines

Since a few hours ago the Odyssey lander from Intuitive Machines rests on the surface of the Moon. There is hope that, with luck, I can wake up after a moonlit night, which lasts two Earth weeks, the Sun collides with the solar panels again. This isn’t easy because it doesn’t have a heater to prevent its components from getting too cold. Although the Japanese SLIM lander does not have them either and was able to wake up after its first lunar night.

Odysseus rushes across the surface of the Moon from February 23. Although he had to land half-blind because his laser altimeter had been set incorrectly before launch, so it didn’t work. So it had to be done nyapa on the fly so that its navigation system uses data from a similar NASA instrument on board the lander.

The downside was that Odyssey’s onboard systems couldn’t process data from NASA’s instrument in real time, so the final minutes of descent were lengthy. practically blind. And that is why he landed with too much vertical and, above all, horizontal speed. Due to the vertical speed – it is six times easier to capsize on the Moon than on Earth – and the fact that one of his legs may have tripped over a rock and broken, Odysseus ended up on his side on the surface of the Moon, as seen in the photo above. .

Odysseus with a broken leg and running engines seconds before landing on the moon – Intuitive Machines

This meant that, on the one hand, communication with him was difficult because its high-gain antenna, capable of high speeds, was not pointed at Earth. And one of the others was shining light onto the surface of the Moon, which caused interference.

But this also caused Odyssey’s main solar panel to not face up, so produced almost no electricity; Consequently, instead of the two weeks they expected him to be active, he had to be put on rest just a week after landing.

Although in any case NASA, which paid $108 million send six instruments aboard the Odyssey, seems satisfied because they were all able to run and send data, regardless of whether they were running for less time and sending less data than expected.

Of course to the agency He has no choice but to put on a good face.: The mission is part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) program, in which NASA contracts services on board landers from private companies. And the first episode of the program, released a few weeks before Odyssey, ended very badly with the burning of the Sapsan lander in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Given what we have seen, it remains to be seen whether the next missions of the CLPS program will maintain their launch dates or not. Although most likely not, there will be delays.