Within a small control room, on Thursday on Thursday local time in Texas, about a dozen white-knuckle engineers started to worry about space with the name Intuitive Machines. Their spacecraft, a lander named Athena, started his last descent to the moon surface.
Just over a year had passed since the company's first attempt to land on the moon with a similarly built vehicle, Odysseus. Due to problems with the laserafond spinder of that spacecraft, it slid into the surface of the moon and it was knocked over.
So engineers of intuitive machines had checked and checked the laser -based altimeters on Athena. When the lander arrived within about 30 km from the moon surface, they tested the distance remedies again. There was some sound in the lectures when the laser of the moon bounced. However, the engineers had reason to believe that the measurements might improve as the spacecraft came closer to the surface.
“Our hope was that the signal would improve noise as we got closer to the moon,” said Tim Crain, Chief Technology Officer for intuitive machines, who afterwards spoke with reporters.
It didn't. The sound remained. And so Athena went blind to the moon to a certain extent. The drive system of the spacecraft, based on liquid oxygen and methane, and designed in -house, worked beautifully. But at the last moments the spacecraft did not quite know where it was compared to the surface.
Probably lying on its side
Furthermore, Crain and the rest of the company, including the Chief Executive Steve Altemus, could not say exactly what happened. After Athena had landed, the engineers were able to talk to the spacecraft in mission control and they could generate some strength from his solar panels. But exactly where it was, or how it was on the floor, they couldn't say a few hours later.
Based on a lecture of a slowniness unit in the vehicle, Athena is most likely on its side. This is the same fate that Odysseus met last year, when it went into the moon, broke a leg and divided.
