Private lunar lander touches down on the moon, but its condition is unknown
https://apnews.com/article/moon-landing-nasa-intuitive-machines-athena-cf4a88baa6644fb381dbaea497001d51
Private lunar lander touches down on the moon, but its condition is unknown
https://apnews.com/article/moon-landing-nasa-intuitive-machines-athena-cf4a88baa6644fb381dbaea497001d51
11 Comments
The landing was tense. We know that it’s on the surface (obviously) and they can talk to it, so it’s not totaled. But they didn’t give many details. Mission control seemed really tense, no celebrations like with Firefly’s landing a few days ago. They ended the stream pretty suddenly without any resolution.
They were in communication with it and working to get a photo sent back so they can confirm the exact status. At one point they were telling the engine to shut off, and said that since the engine was still on it must still be upright (not flipped over). Really unclear exactly what’s happening.
So far seems like it may be another partial success like their last attempt. At least they can talk to it so they can still get at least some data back and so there will be some science returns. Press conference scheduled for a few hours so hopefully they explain in detail then.
Still good news for us. And right now, we need as much as good news In America as we can.
My impression listening to their loop and the Blue Ghost loop the other day was that Firefly had a much more formalized protocol and clearly defined lines of responsibility, defined steps for contingencies, and so on, whereas IM was much more relaxed and informal and when things went wrong they didn’t seem to really have a clearly practiced behavioral protocol. Can someone who knows more about this comment on it? Am I of base? Does this kind of difference matter?
It would be very embarrassing for Intuitive Machines if they have land sideways AGAIN.
I’m curious why they keep making their landers tall and thin.
If they’ve laid another one on its side, then they’re really going to have to rethink this tall architecture they seem wedded to.
Did anyone else catch on the livestream when two guys were talking in front of the camera each with a model of the lander in their hands and then tipped it over into it’s side and looked at it that way for a minute?
Could have been nothing, but considering how they landed last time I found it interesting.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|——-|———|—|
|[CoG](/r/Space/comments/1j52jhg/stub/mgdrhue “Last usage”)|Center of Gravity (see CoM)|
|CoM|Center of Mass|
|[IM](/r/Space/comments/1j52jhg/stub/mgdihop “Last usage”)|Initial Mass deliverable to a given orbit, without accounting for fuel|
|[LCC](/r/Space/comments/1j52jhg/stub/mgdks34 “Last usage”)|Launch Control Center|
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I will head over and turn it upright. Be right back.
They are eerily silent. They expected images within 2 hours, and still nothing. Combined with the tense problem solving I suspect things didn’t go according to plan. I do think it made it down mostly in one piece.
My cousin is working on this project and at 11am AZ time he said it may have tipped over.