Keneci Network @kenecifeed
Intuitive Machines in latest updates, announced that they finally have images of Odysseus descent to the lunar surface. During descent the lander could not deploy EagleCam as scheduled to photograph its touchdown from below. Hence no pictures of the moment of touchdown were sent.
Things have since progressed as Intuitive Machines wrote on X in series of posts:
"Odysseus continues to communicate with flight controllers in Nova Control from the lunar surface. After understanding the end-to-end communication requirements, Odysseus sent images from the lunar surface of its vertical descent to its Malapert A landing site, representing the furthest south any vehicle has been able to land on the Moon and establish communication with ground controllers. 1/5 (26FEB2024 0745 CST)
Odysseus captured this image approximately 35 seconds after pitching over during its approach to the landing site. The camera is on the starboard aft-side of the lander in this phase. 2/5 (26FEB2024 0745 CST)"
"As part of Odysseus’ descent onto the lunar surface, Hazard Relative Navigation algorithms detected nine safe landing sites within the targeted south pole region, which is an area that contains permanently shadowed regions that may be rich in resources, including water ice that could be used for future propulsion and life support on the Moon. 3/5 (26FEB2024 0745 CST)
Images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera team confirmed Odysseus completed its landing at 80.13°S and 1.44°E at a 2579 m elevation. After traveling more than 600,000 miles, Odysseus landed within 1.5 km of its intended Malapert A landing site, using a contingent laser range-finding system patched hours before landing. Image credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University. 4/5 (26FEB2024 0745 CST)"
"Flight controllers intend to collect data until the lander’s solar panels are no longer exposed to light. Based on Earth and Moon positioning, we believe flight controllers will continue to communicate with Odysseus until Tuesday morning. Image credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University. 5/5 (26FEB2024 0745 CST)"
==================
Odysseus successfully touched down about 300 kilometers from the moon's south pole yesterday on Feb. 22.; a first for private spacecraft, and a first for an American space vehicle since NASA's crewed Apollo 17 lander did so in December 1972.
"Your order was delivered… to the Moon!" NASA wrote on X. "@Int_Machines' uncrewed lunar lander landed at 6:23pm ET (2323 UTC), bringing NASA science to the Moon's surface. These instruments will prepare us for future human exploration of the Moon under #Artemis."
"What a triumph! Odysseus has taken the moon," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a video message the agency aired just after confirmation of a successful touchdown. "This feat is a giant leap forward for all of humanity. Stay tuned!"
Intuitive Machines later gave updates in a series of X posts: "After troubleshooting communications, flight controllers have confirmed Odysseus is upright and starting to send data. Right now, we are working to downlink the first images from the lunar surface.
Lunar Surface Day One Update (23FEB2024 0818 CST)
Odysseus is alive and well. Flight controllers are communicating and commanding the vehicle to download science data. The lander has good telemetry and solar charging.
We continue to learn more about the vehicle’s specific information (Lat/Lon), overall health, and attitude (orientation). Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus will participate in a press conference later today to discuss this historic moment. Press conference information will be coordinated with NASA and published shortly.
On Feb. 22, 2024, Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lunar lander captures a wide field of view image of Schomberger crater on the Moon approximately 125 miles (200 km) uprange from the intended landing site, at approximately about 6 miles (10 km) altitude."
However the touchdown didn't go without a hitch.
During descent to the the moon's surface, mission team members discovered that Odysseus' laser rangefinders, which the lander used to determine its altitude and horizontal velocity, weren't working properly. So they switched over to an experimental NASA instrument that Odysseus was carrying. This helped in the vital landing operations.
However the lander could not deploy EagleCam -- an instrument built by students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) -- as scheduled to occur from Odysseus about 30 meters above the lunar surface. EagleCam was supposed to photograph the the lander's touchdown from below. In other words no pictures yet of the moment of touchdown.
Due to the navigation complications, which required the uplink of a software patch, "the decision was made to power down EagleCam during landing and not deploy the device during Odysseus' final descent," Mike Cavaliere, ERAU's director of news and media relations, wrote in an update today (Feb. 23). "However, both the Intuitive Machines and EagleCam teams still plan to deploy EagleCam and capture images of the lander on the lunar surface as the mission continues. The time of deployment is currently unknown. Stay tuned! More information will be released as soon as it becomes available."
Intuitive Machines held a press conference late night(UTC) on feb. 23, attended by CEO Steve Altemus, deputy associate administrator for Exploration Joel Kearns, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington, deputy associate administrator, Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters Prasan Desai, and chief technology officer and co-founder, Intuitive Machines Tim Crain.
Altemus explained at the news conference, that Odysseus lander tipped over after a landing leg foot got caught in the surface of the moon during touchdown.
===================
Intuitive Machines' moon lander has arrived in lunar orbit on Feb. 21, following the completion of a crucial maneuver. The Spacecraft which is now circling the moon, has also sent first pictures of the lunar planet to Earth.
"Odysseus completed its scheduled 408-second main engine lunar orbit insertion burn and is currently in a 92-km circular lunar orbit," Intuitive Machines announced on X. "After traveling over 1,000,000 km, Odysseus is now closer to the moon than the end-to-end distance driving across Space City, Houston, TX."
Odysseus snapped its first photo of the moon (that we know of) during its approach. "Goodnight, moon." the company said in a earlier X sharing the pictures. "Odysseus captured this image approximately 100,000 km from the moon using its Terrain Relative Navigation camera."
"Odysseus’ Terrain Relative Navigation camera captured this image of the Bel’kovich K crater in the Moon’s northern equatorial highlands," the company wrote in another post late Wednesday night UTC. "It is an approximate 50 km diameter crater with mountains in the center, made when the crater was formed."
The lander, which is about the size of a British telephone booth, will make its first attempt at touchdown near the moon's south pole on Thursday afternoon (Feb. 22) no earlier than 2230 UTC. No private spacecraft has ever soft-landed on the moon, and no American vehicle has done so since Apollo 17 in 1972.
Odysseus launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Feb. 15.
==================
Intuitive Machines' IM-1 Nova-C class moon lander Odysseus launched this week atop a SpaceX falcon 9 rocket; and is now on its way to the lunar surface. The Houston-based company on Saturday posted the first set of pictures transmitted to Earth by the spacecraft.
"Intuitive Machines successfully transmitted its first IM-1 mission images to Earth on February 16, 2024," the company posted on X, along with latest pictures. "The images were captured shortly after separation from @SpaceX's second stage on Intuitive Machines’ first journey to the Moon under @NASA's CLPS initiative."
==================
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched Odysseus, a robotic Nova-C class lunar lander built by the Houston-based company Intuitive Machines, at 0605 UTC on Feb. 15, from Kennedy Space Center(KSC)'s Pad 39A in Florida. The IM-1 mission comes just hours after the Elon Musk-owned rocket company launched classified USSF-124 mission deploying six satellites for the United States Space Force.
About 7.5 minutes after liftoff for the IM-1 mission, Falcon 9's reusable first stage came back to Earth for a vertical touchdown at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. This was the 18th launch and landing for this particular booster, according to SpaceX. That's just one short of the company's reuse record, which it set this past December.
Falcon 9's upper stage meanwhile, continued skywards, eventually deploying Odysseus into a lunar transfer orbit roughly 48.5 minutes after liftoff. The 675-kilogram lunar lander made its first contact with mission control a few minutes later.
"It is a profoundly humbling moment for all of us at Intuitive Machines," Trent Martin, the company's vice president of space systems, said during a prelaunch press conference on Tuesday (Feb. 13). "The opportunity to return the United States to the moon for the first time since 1972 demands a hunger to explore, and that's at the heart of everyone at Intuitive Machines."
"The IM-1 mission Nova-C class lunar lander has launched on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and successfully commissioned in space by establishing a stable attitude, solar charging, and radio communications contact with the Company’s mission operations center in Houston," Intuitive Machines wrote On X.
Odysseus is scheduled to touch down near Malapert A, a small crater about 300 kilometers from the moon's south pole, on Feb. 22. And if all goes according to plan, it will become the first-ever private spacecraft to land on the lunar surface. The U.S. has not been to the moon since NASA's Apollo 17 mission more than half a century ago.
NASA, via its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, booked a ride on IM-1 for the agency's science gear including instruments designed to collect data that will aid the Artemis program which aims to establish a crewed base near the moon's south pole by the end of the 2020s.
This region of the lunar surface is thought to be rich in water ice, which could support Artemis astronauts and also be processed into rocket propellant, allowing crews to refuel spacecraft away from Earth.
Odysseus is carrying six NASA instruments valued at $118 million in contract, plus additional development cost of $11 million according to NASA officials.
The NASA science instruments on IM-1 include:
ROLSES (Radio Observations of the Lunar Surface Photoelectron Sheath) will characterize the electron plasma and radio environments near IM-1's landing site;
LRA (Laser Retro-Reflector Array), a tiny set of reflectors, will serve as a guidepost to help future landers make precision touchdowns on the moon;
NDL (Navigation Doppler Lidar for Precise Velocity and Range Sensing) will use LIDAR (light detection and ranging) technology to gather super-precise data during Odysseus' descent and landing;
SCALPSS (Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies) will study how Odysseus' exhaust plume interacts with lunar dirt and rocks during landing, gathering data that could inform future Artemis lander designs;
LN-1 (Lunar Node 1 Navigation Demonstrator), a small radio navigation beacon, will demonstrate autonomous spacecraft positioning tech, which could aid future lunar rovers and landers and eventually become part of a larger, GPS-like system on and around the moon;
RFMG (Radio Frequency Mass Gauge statement) will use radio waves to measure how much fuel is left in Odysseus' tank — something that's tough to do in a microgravity environment.
Odysseus is also carrying six commercial payloads for a variety of customers, including Columbia Sportswear, which will test its "Omni-Heat Infinity" insulative material on IM-1.
Among the other private payloads is a set of sculptures by artist Jeff Koons and a "secure lunar repository," which aims to help safeguard the entirety of human knowledge should something terrible happen here on Earth.
Also flying on IM-1 is EagleCam, which was built by students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. This camera system will deploy from Odysseus as it nears the lunar surface and attempt to snap photos of the lander's touchdown.
In series of posts early morning UTC Friday, on X, Intuitive Machines gave the following IM-1 Mission Vehicle Health Update:
"The IM-1 mission Nova-C class lunar lander continues to be in excellent health, and we are preparing for our engine commissioning maneuver.
Following nominal launch vehicle separation, the spacecraft autonomously brought up all sensors and radios. Odysseus listened to the Inertial Measurement Unit to determine attitude rates and activated the Reaction Control System to nullify those attitude rates as designed.
Earlier today, Nova-C’s navigation system rejected star tracker data, but a patch has been sent to the spacecraft, and the star tracker updates have resumed nominal operations.
Initially, the star tracker information was numerically conditioned slightly differently than we anticipated. We were expecting a one-in-a-thousand numerical tolerance and received a number more like two and three in a thousand. So, Nova-C’s navigation system rejected the star tracker data.
When we tested this system terrestrially, they were within tolerance, but we experienced slightly different numerical conditioning in flight.
The vehicle had a very low rate of rotation, approximately .15 degrees per second, mostly around the long axis, which caused our solar arrays and antennas to rotate in and out of the desired attitude.
When we tested this system terrestrially, they were within tolerance, but we experienced slightly different numerical conditioning in flight.
The vehicle had a very low rate of rotation, approximately .15 degrees per second, mostly around the long axis, which caused our solar arrays and antennas to rotate in and out of the desired attitude.
We noticed that, at one point, we passed through Nova-C’s max power attitude, and we recorded the artificial attitude. We then manually forced the navigation system to advance to attitude pointing and commanded the vehicle to go to the maximum power attitude we observed.
This put Nova-C into a power-positive configuration and fully charged Nova-C’s batteries. With the diagnostic data we collected, we identified a patch to align the numerical conditioning of the star tracker data with our navigation system’s acceptance test. We tested the patch on the ground, sent it to the spacecraft, restarted the star tracker, and immediately began processing star tracker updates – resuming nominal operations.
Again, the IM-1 mission Nova-C class lunar lander is in excellent health, and we are preparing for Odysseus’ commissioning maneuver."
Another CLPS effort, Astrobotic's Peregrine lander launched on Jan. 8, atop United Launch Alliance's new Vulcan Centaur rocket. But the lander suffered a crippling fuel leak shortly after deploying from the rocket's upper stage. The lunar lander ended up making a controlled destruction in Earth's atmosphere on Jan. 18.
Several hours earlier at 2230 UTC (Feb. 14) before IM-1, another Falcon 9 rocket launched the USSF-124 mission from Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The Falcon 9's first stage came back to Earth for a vertical touchdown at Cape Canaveral about eight minutes after liftoff. SpaceX ended the launch webcast shortly thereafter at the request of the Space Force. The landing marked SpaceX's 272nd landing of an orbital-class rocket.
"A -felt thank you to the @SpaceForceDoD for entrusting SpaceX with today’s mission!" SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell wrote on X.
In what became a busy 24 hours for the company, SpaceX also launched their routine Starlink mission late night UTC (Feb. 15) from California, deploying 22 satellites for its global internet service.
"Three Falcon 9 launches in ~23 hours, completing our 13th, 14th, and 15th missions of the year" SpaceX wrote on X, following the Starlink mission launch.