Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus moon lander, coming down faster than expected and moving slightly to one side at the moment of touchdown Thursday, apparently caught a footpad on the lunar surface and tipped over onto its side, officials said Friday.
Telemetry indicates the top of the spacecraft may be resting on a rock or the lander could be tipped over on upward-sloping terrain. But Steve Altemus, CEO and co-founder of Intuitive Machines, said Odysseus is still able to draw power from the sun and send engineering and science data back to Earth.
Engineers are in the process of downloading data and hope to downlink stored images as early as this weekend clarifying the orientation of the 14-foot-tall spacecraft.
“We’re downloading and commanding data from the buffers in the spacecraft and trying to get you surface photos because I know that everyone’s hungry for those,” Altemus said.
Steve Altemus, Intuitive Machines CEO and co-founder, uses a model of the company’s Odysseus moon lander to illustrate how the spacecraft likely tipped over during touchdown Thursday. Based on telemetry, it appears the lander’s top section may be resting on a rock (the small blue model). It’s also possible the spacecraft tipped over on sloping terrain or even caught one of its foot pads in a crevice.
NASA TV
In the meantime, all the lander’s active instruments, provided by NASA and commercial customers, are facing away from the lunar surface and should be able to return data as planned. But it likely will take longer than expected given some of the tilted spacecraft’s antennas do not face Earth.
And there’s not much time. Regardless of the tip over, the sun will drop below the horizon at the landing site in a little more than one week, ending power generation by the lander’s solar cells. That was always in the cards.
The spacecraft is not designed to withstand the ultra-low temperatures of the lunar night and while flight controllers will attempt to recontact the probe when the sun rises again, they do not expect Odysseus to answer.
“Three major accomplishments”
All that said, Joel Kearns, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for exploration, praised Intuitive Machines for its off-kilter but still-successful landing.
“Let me congratulate Intuitive Machines for three major accomplishments,” he said. “The first is for having the first successful soft landing on the moon by the United States since 1972. The second is for being the first non-government commercial organization to actually touch down safely.
“And the third is for having a touchdown point at 80 degrees south latitude, much closer to the south pole of the moon than any earlier U.S. robotic or human explorers.”
That’s important to NASA, which plans to send Artemis astronauts to the south polar region in the next several years to looks for possible ice deposits while establishing a long-term presence on the moon.
On Saturday, President Joe Biden commented on the milestone in a statement that congratulated NASA and the Intuitive Machines team.
“America does hard things,” the statement read. “We rise to the great scientific challenges of our time. And there’s nothing beyond our capacity when we work together.”
Odysseus was partially funded by NASA’s Commercial Lunar Services Payloads program, designed to encourage private industry to develop transportation capabilities that the agency can then use to transport payloads to the moon.
The Odysseus moon lander seen during pre-launch processing.
Intuitive Machines
NASA paid Intuitive Machines $118 million to carry six payloads to the moon aboard Odysseus.
Launched Feb. 15 by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Odysseus braked into orbit around the moon Wednesday. Flight controllers subsequently raised the orbit slightly to correct a slight targeting error and were gearing up for landing when they ran into problems with a sensor package needed to help fine-tune the trajectory to touchdown.
Luckily for Intuitive Machines, one of the six NASA payloads on board Odysseus was intended to test a different type of navigation sensor, an instrument known as NDL, which stands for Navigation Doppler Lidar.
The NDL system operates like a radar but captures reflected laser light instead of radio waves to precisely measure vehicle velocity, direction and altitude.
Odysseus was commanded to make an additional orbit of the moon while engineers hurriedly wrote and tested software patches to integrate the NASA system into the lander’s navigation algorithms.
“That’s what allowed them to be successful,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told CBS News Thursday night. “It was a NASA payload that saved the day. (But) don’t take anything away from Odysseus and Intuitive Machines, because this is the first commercial lander to be able to pull off this feat.”
As Odysseus closed in on its landing site, it pitched up from horizontal to a vertical orientation for the final descent to touchdown. The flight plan called for the spacecraft to land with a purely vertical velocity of just 2 mph, roughly a moderate walking pace.
Because of the unexpected lateral velocity, however, engineers believe one of the lander’s six footpads either hit a rock or got caught in a crevice, causing the spacecraft to tip over.
Base on telemetry, “it has to be somewhat elevated off the surface horizontally, so that’s why we think it’s on a rock or the foot is in a crevice or something to hold it in that attitude,” Altemus said.
An artist’s impression of the Odysseus landing in the expected vertical orientation after touchdown. Engineers say the spacecraft actually tipped over during landing, leaving it resting on its side.
Intuitive Machines
The revelation that Odysseus had tipped over on touchdown came as a surprise following an overnight update from Intuitive Machines saying telemetry indicated the spacecraft was in an upright orientation. Altemus said Friday that conclusion was based on “stale data.”
A more through analysis of residual propellant and data from inertial measurement units indicating the direction of gravity showed the spacecraft was, in fact, resting on its side.
The landing highlighted the risks faced by any robotic spacecraft attempting to land on unknown terrain and the challenge of autonomously navigating around rocks and other obstacles that cannot be seen from orbit.
A Japanese moon probe tipped over on touchdown last month, limiting its ability to complete the planned science agenda. Altemus and Tim Crain, Intuitive’s chief technology officer, both were optimistic Odysseus can still accomplish most of its objectives.
But at least one hoped-for objective will not be met.
An experimental camera system built by students at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, designed to be released before touchdown to capture imagery of the lander during its final descent, was not deployed as planned because of software constraints related to the guidance system problem.
The “EagleCam” package will be ejected later, Altemus said, shot out dozens of feet to one side. If all goes well, the cameras will show Odysseus resting on its side, giving engineers – and the public – the best views available of the spacecraft’s orientation.
Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
