Odysseus, the first US-built spacecraft to touchdown on the moon in more than half a century, is tipped over on its side, according to an update from Nasa and Intuitive Machines, the company that built and operated the lander.
The robotic lander descended on to the south polar region of the moon on Thursday at 6.23pm ET. But several minutes passed before flight controllers were able to pick up a signal from the lander’s communication systems.
As it landed, Odysseus “caught a foot in the surface and tipped” said Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus, ending up on its side.
Still, the lander is “near or at our intended landing site”, he said. Nasa and Intuitive Machines said they have been receiving data from the lander and believe that most of the scientific instruments that it is carrying are in a position to work.
These engineers need to watch more BattleBots. You always build in a self-righting mechanism.
“Needs more struts” - KSP players
The average person may well scoff at the idea that we can’t land on the moon properly even though we could do it 60 years ago, but your average KSP chads are just amazed we’ve managed to actually land on the mun and not waste billions on making penis rockets that crash 10ft away from base.
the word for that is:
tripped
Tipping culture is getting out of hand
“Tripping culture is getting out of hand”
FTFY
So Japens moon lander landed upside down, and Americas fell over. This isn’t looking too good for the future of space exploration.
Mars landers: are we a joke to you??
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Need to start launching from Australia at this rate. Maybe then they’ll show up in the correct vertical orientation.
We have multiple countries sending moon landers, and a few planning to return people to the moon to start a launching pad to Mars. A few accidents involving unmanned probes is nothing to worry about.
And this one wasn’t even a country per se, but a company. Though NASA has some experiments they out on the craft.
True! Hopefully the manned missons land right side up.
I’m much less worried about human piloted craft. It’s very difficult to program complex decision making and discernment. The astronauts present in the first landers will have been intensively trained in how to avoid catastrophe and will likely be able to come up with solutions on the fly if unanticipated things happen. Still dangerous, but hopefully less so.
It will be much easier to land completely automatically once we have landing pads, radar tracking, and other infrastructure present on the surface. It’s just hard to land a robot on an airless moon with a bunch of rocks and hills and shit everywhere.
A few years back one crashed because the European team used metric and the American team used imperial. They are getting better…
>tries science
>uses imperial
???
It’s weird to me that nobody noticed earlier
You know… I think naming a spaceship (or any ship, really) after a man who took twenty years to return from his voyage might not be the best idea to avoid jinxing it.
Yeah. Should have named it Icarus or Unsinkable 2 or something like that.
“Unsinkable 2 - For real this time!”
The Police were asked for their opinion and said: “Giant steps are what you take, walking on the moon.”
ACAB … including Sting.
This is my favorite Sting interview.
Wait, wasn’t this a private company? Are there two new Lunar landers?
NASA funded lander built and operated by Intuitive Machines, launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9, delivering NASA scientific payloads.
My understanding is it’s a NASA mission but they hitched a ride on a private rocket
This certainly doesn’t sound like a very intuitive machine.
