Scientists and private contractors plan to extend the Odysseus probe’s mission into a cold ‘lunar night’ — betting against the odds that the moon’s below -300 degrees Fahrenheit dark phase won’t kill the craft.
The announcement emerged during a mission update Wednesday that included stunning fisheye-lens images of the historic, NASA-funded craft’s lunar touchdown.
Odysseus will soon go dark for a two-week-long lunar night, NASA-contractor Intuitive Machines said, losing access to solar power and enduring chills that could critically degrade not only the probe’s batteries but its internal hardware as well.
Described by Intuitive Machines’ CEO as a successful ‘scout and a pilot mission,’ the $118 million Odysseus came to a rocky landing that alarmed mission control, snapping off pieces of its landing gear on impact with the moon’s surface.
But, as one of NASA’s lead scientists explained during today’s live event, broadcast from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Odysseus is a ‘scrappy little dude.’
The lander, which made the first ‘soft landing’ by a US craft on the moon in 50 years, has since transmitted 350 megabytes of science and technical data back to Earth.
NASA scientists and private contractor Intuitive Machines plan to extend their Odysseus probe’s moon mission into a cold ‘lunar night’ that could kill the craft. Described as a ‘scout’ mission, the craft had initially made a rocky ‘soft’ landing (above) that alarmed mission control
The chilly new announcement emerged during a mission update Wednesday that included stunning fisheye-lens images of the historic craft’s touchdown on the lunar surface (above)
Intuitive Machines’ CEO and co-founder Steve Altemus described the objectives for Odysseus, or ‘Odie’ for short, as essentially a test of new systems for lunar travel, and to scout new and more challenging lunar landing sites, ahead of NASA’s plans for returning humans to the moon in 2025.
‘We accomplished that,’ Altemus said at the live-streamed press event.
‘What we have done with this mission,’ Altemus continued, ‘is fundamentally change the economics of landing on the moon.’
The CEO described his company’s goals with the NASA-funded, $118 million lunar project as ‘trying to create a business that is a national asset to the United States.’
Intuitive Machines’ CEO described the objectives for Odysseus as essentially a test of new systems for lunar travel, and to scout new and more challenging lunar landing sites ahead of NASA’s plans for returning humans to the moon in 2025: ‘We accomplished that’
Odysseus was partly funded by NASA who paid to put scientific equipment on board but also carried other objects – including 125 miniature sculptures by pop artist Jeff Koons
The Odysseus craft — which launched on February 15th aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida — had been tasked with delivering six NASA scientific instruments to a site near the moon’s southern pole.
Altemus said that, despite some hiccups, all six of those payloads ultimately became operational, providing guidance navigation and propulsion data, alongside other key measurements needed for a full ‘mission reconstruction’ to complete its scouting.
Odysseus’ mission, dubbed IM-1, was funded as part of the US space agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative and its Artemis campaign to return American astronauts to the moon.
Joel Kearns, a deputy associate administrator for exploration at NASA, took the lead on explaining just how challenging Odie’s mission was, and why the craft had cracked its landing gear during touchdown.
‘This is a very complex undertaking,’ Kearns said.
‘We get questions periodically that, since Americans did land on the moon in the 1960s, and we haven’t been back in a long time, ‘Why is it really that difficult?”
‘To get to the surface of the Moon, since there is no air on the moon,’ the NASA administrator explained, ‘in effect you have to ride a rocket all the way from the fast speed of being up in orbit all the way to being at no speed at a pre-determined point on the surface at a pre-determined elevation.’
With no atmosphere to provide friction or drag, much less a parachute landing, the Odysseus had to reverse its own thrusters and perfectly mathematically calculate its deceleration before impact.
‘In effect you have to bring down with you on the rocket all the fuel you need to slow down,’ Kearns said, fuel that constantly changes the mass of the craft as it burns off.
‘A soft touchdown on the Moon is a great accomplishment,’ he said.
Odysseus landed at a latitude about 80 degrees south, near the moon’s South Pole, recording reams of data as it went — critical information that will one day help get more advanced robotic and human missions to the moon.
But the craft landed a small distance away and on a higher elevation than its intended target, the Malapert A crater, 185 miles from the moon’s south pole.
The result, on February 22, 2024, was an impact with the lunar surface at a higher speed than intended.
Above, Tim Crain, the chief technology officer and co-founder for NASA contractor Intuitive Machines illustrates details on the ‘Odie’ probe’s landing and how it now leans against a rocky incline on the moon’s surface. The lander now rests at a 30-degree angle, Crain and others said
Two NASA scientists and two chief executives from Intuitive Machines spoke at today’s event
Intuitive Machines’ chief technology officer Tim Crain praised his company’s small but ‘efficient’ team. ‘Every person was essential,’ Crain said.
‘It really was all hands on deck. Let’s maximize the time we have available on this asset while we can,’
‘As of the time I came into this briefing,’ Crain noted, ‘we had brought down over 350 megabytes of science and engineering data on this mission.’
The project scientist in charge of NASA’s CLPS, astrophysicist and planetary scientist Sue Lederer, got into further details on the quality and usefulness of that data.
Odie’s ROLSES sensor, short for ‘radio spectrometer for measuring the electron density,’ NASA planetary scientist Sue Lederer said, not only ‘detected frequencies of radio noise from the Earth’ but helped provide data consistent with the theory of a ‘radio quiet Sun’ as a ‘bonus’
Lederer noted that, in addition to its primary mission collecting data for future moon landings, the equipment on Odie helped contribute to some basic ‘bonus science’ about our solar system.
The ROLSES sensor, short for ‘radio spectrometer for measuring the electron density,’ she said, not only ‘detected frequencies of radio noise from the Earth’ but helped provide data consistent with the theory of a ‘radio quiet Sun.’
But still more bonus science is in store for Odysseus, as its mission control handlers at NASA and Intuitive Machines plan to see if they can manage to reboot the device after it goes dark amid the coming two-week-long lunar night.
Intuitive Machines CEO said that within hours, his team would, ‘tuck Odie in for the cold night of the moon,’ which lasts for half of the moon’s month-long rotation cycle.
The company’s CFO, Crain, explained that the probe had not been designed expressly to withstand the potentially -387 degrees Fahrenheit temperatures during a lunar night, and its electronics may ‘basically crack under the thermal stress.’
Crain pointed out that the internal chemistry of the lunar lander’s batteries might also not survive the cold night, potentially deforming as they froze.
But NASA’s Sue Lederer said Odysseus had surprised the team with its hardiness and that she wouldn’t bet against the ‘scrappy little dude.’
Intuitive’s CEO Altemus expects that more data collection will be tried ‘in a couple of weeks.’
‘No eulogies’ are planned for Odie, just yet, he said. The team’s logic for these reach goals, as he put it, was ‘Why not try?’
