The first US probe to land on the Moon after 50 years has finally died. He basically worked for a week
Odysseus, the first US lander to reach the Moon in over 50 years, has "permanently shut down" and will never wake up again, the company that built it announced Saturday (March 23).
The lunar lander, nicknamed Odie, landed near the lunar south pole on February 22, after a hair-raising approach and a malfunction of the spacecraft's landing guidance system. Unfortunately, the spacecraft landed at a steep angle after one of its six legs broke. The lander's stumble led to a complete failure of the mission, which consisted of studying the behavior of lunar dust during spacecraft landings and measuring conditions in the little-explored lunar region.
Odysseus, built by Houston-based Intuitive Machines, shut down a week after landing, when lunar night began for 14 days. Flight controllers ordered the spacecraft to snooze for three weeks while the moon's south pole faced the sun, but hoped Odie would wake up once sunlight hit its solar panels again.
Image from Odysseus
“Intuitive Machines began listening for Odie's wake signal on March 20, when we predicted that sufficient sunlight would potentially charge the lander's power system and turn on its radio,” company representatives wrote on , formerly called Twitter.
Odysseus' mission was not intended to survive the frigid temperatures and darkness of the lunar night, but "flight controllers placed Odie in a configuration that he could call home if various systems exceeded manufacturer expectations," they added Intuitive Machines representatives.
On February 22, the lander sent back a final farewell image before being plunged into darkness and shutting down its systems.
Odie has not attempted to contact the base since March 20, although his solar panels now receive enough light to apparently power the spacecraft's radio. On Saturday, flight controllers concluded that "Odie's fuel system would not complete another call home," Intuitive Machines representatives wrote on X.
“This confirms that Odie is finally gone after cementing its legacy in history as the first commercial lunar lander to land on the Moon,” they added.
Odysseus launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on February 15. The lander entered lunar orbit on February 21 and completed a single tight loop above the lunar surface before slowing down for landing.
The mission is the second to touch the Moon's south pole, following the successful landing of India's Chandrayaan-3 in August 2023. (Chandrayaan-3 also died shortly after its arrival.) The region has long intrigued scientists because it contains water ice, which could one day be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen to make rocket fuel.
We no longer plan like we used to
Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 launched in 1977, with technology from another era. Yet the design of NASA at the time was a little different from today. They should have stopped the mission in the 1980s, but they managed to explore the entire solar system. Voyager -1 has not sent data since December 2023, Voyager 2 is studying interstellar space, but is expected to run out of energy in 2025. Now its mission is continuing, after 46 years. Not a week.
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The article The first US probe to land on the Moon after 50 years has finally died. He basically worked for a week comes from Scenari Economici .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/la-prima-sonda-usa-sulla-luna-e-morta-definitivamente-praticamente-ha-lavorato-una-settimana/ on Tue, 26 Mar 2024 19:53:32 +0000.