Produced by: Tarun Mishra Designed by: Muskan Arora
NASA backed Intuitive Machines' Odysseus moon lander encountered a setback during touchdown, tipping over onto its side due to a faster-than-expected descent and lateral movement.
In recent Moon landing missions, incidents have occurred during the touchdown phase. Japan's SMART lander experienced a similar issue to Odyessues, when it tipped over onto its solar panels upon landing. Similarly, Russia's Luna-25 encountered a crash during its landing attempt in August 2023. Out of the last four Moon landing missions, only ISRO's Chandrayaan-3 successfully executed a soft touchdown without any mishap and accomplished all its primary missions.
Officials revealed that the Odysseus spacecraft may be resting on a rock or an upward-sloping terrain, causing the unexpected tip-over. Despite this, Odysseus remains operational, drawing power from the sun and transmitting data back to Earth.
Engineers are currently downloading data from the spacecraft and aiming to retrieve stored images over the weekend to clarify its orientation.
Despite the tilt, all active instruments onboard Odysseus are functional and positioned away from the lunar surface, allowing them to continue returning data as planned.
With the lunar sunset approaching in about a week, there is limited time to rectify the situation before power generation from the solar cells ceases. However, flight controllers remain hopeful but do not expect Odysseus to respond after the lunar night.
Despite the landing mishap, NASA commended Intuitive Machines for achieving three significant milestones: the first successful soft landing on the moon by the United States since 1972, the first safe touchdown by a non-government commercial organization, and landing at 80 degrees south latitude, closer to the moon's south pole than any previous U.S. explorers.
President Joe Biden acknowledged the milestone, highlighting America's capacity to tackle scientific challenges and work collaboratively.
Odysseus, partially funded by NASA, carried six payloads to the moon, demonstrating the agency's commitment to leveraging private industry for lunar exploration.