{"id":526847,"date":"2024-02-29T11:42:01","date_gmt":"2024-02-29T09:42:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=526847"},"modified":"2024-02-29T11:43:41","modified_gmt":"2024-02-29T09:43:41","slug":"us-moon-lander-goes-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/science\/526847-us-moon-lander-goes-dark.html","title":{"rendered":"US Moon lander goes dark"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US spacecraft that stumbled during its\u00a0historic moon landing<\/a><\/strong> last week has gone dark, capping a closely watched mission that advanced private-sector space exploration but fell short of customers\u2019 overall goals.<\/p>\n

After six days on the moon, the \u201crobust\u201d and \u201cplucky\u201d spacecraft would run out of power to transmit data on Wednesday evening, Steve Altemus, chief executive officer of Intuitive Machines Inc., which built and operated the lander, told reporters.<\/p>\n

The spacecraft, nicknamed Odysseus, gathered \u201cso much data and information and science,\u201d Altemus said. \u201cIt\u2019s just an incredible testament to how robust…that little spacecraft is.\u201d<\/p>\n

After slipping into hibernation around 7 p.m. US East Coast time on Wednesday, Intuitive Machines will try to wake up Odysseus after about two weeks of lunar night to see if the craft\u2019s solar panels can harness returning sunlight, Altemus said.<\/p>\n

NASA paid about $118 million to Intuitive Machines for the moon journey, carrying payloads for the space agency and commercial customers.<\/p>\n

The mission is part of NASA\u2019s broader,\u00a0$2.6 billion<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0strategy to\u00a0tap private sector technology<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>to explore the moon as it prepares for human missions later this decade.<\/p>\n

It marked the first private-sector lander to reach the moon intact \u2014 and America\u2019s first successful landing in more than 50 years.<\/p>\n

It also broke a string of failures by other companies at a time of resurgent national interest and investment in exploring the moon.<\/p>\n

But Odysseus\u2019 faster-than-expected landing\u00a0limited communications<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0from the little-explored lunar south pole. Company executives said on Wednesday that Intuitive was able to forge workarounds and communicate with customers\u2019 instruments, sending home some 350 megabytes of engineering and science data.<\/p>\n

Still, the mission endured other setbacks. Because of the rough landing \u2014 which left the vehicle tilted at a roughly 30-degree angle \u2014 a system failed to study how its engines kicked up moon dust.<\/p>\n

A separate camera designed by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University failed to deploy and capture the landing, though flight controllers later managed to eject it. No images have returned.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat does the future hold? Number one, more cameras,\u201d Tim Crain, Intuitive\u2019s chief technology officer told reporters.<\/p>\n

Later this year, Intuitive hopes to send another lander to the moon\u2019s south pole with equipment to look for water by\u00a0collecting and analysing<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0soil at different depths.<\/p>\n

A third mission will send a number of payloads, including shoebox-sized robots to\u00a0wheel around<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0the moon\u2019s Reiner Gamma swirl and collect 3D imagery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The US spacecraft that stumbled during its\u00a0historic moon landing last week has gone dark, capping a closely watched mission that advanced private-sector space exploration but fell short of customers\u2019 overall goals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":526945,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31750],"tags":[92683,44532,9563,82565,761,92681],"class_list":["post-526847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","tag-intuitive-machines","tag-lunar-missions","tag-moon","tag-moon-missions","tag-nasa","tag-odysseus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526847"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526847"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":526955,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526847\/revisions\/526955"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}