Soon it will be time to say, “Good night, moon landing.”
Last week, Odysseus, a privately built robotic lunar lander, became the first US spacecraft to land on the moon in more than 50 years and the first non-government attempt ever to accomplish the feat.
But like the Homeric Greek hero he was named after, the lander did not have an easy journey with a tidy, happy ending. The spacecraft faced a series of near-catastrophic challenges, nearly losing its way and then crash-landing.
During a press conference Wednesday afternoon, Intuitive Machines, the Houston-based company that built Odysseus, said the spacecraft continued to operate, but that it would enter a planned shutdown within hours.
The few hours stretched into almost another day. On Thursday morning, Intuitive Machines said in a statement that the spacecraft was “still kicking.”
The spacecraft, nicknamed Odie, is set to begin decommissioning at noon ET on Thursday, the company said. “Flight controllers plan to disconnect additional data and command Odie into a configuration that will be able to call home if and when he wakes up when the sun comes up again.”
Despite everything that went wrong, Steve Altemus, the CEO of Intuitive Machines, still called the mission “an unqualified success.”
Odysseus achieved its primary goal, Mr. Altemus said, which was “to gently touch the surface of the moon, gently and safely, and return science data to our customers.”
Originally, the mission was to last nine or 10 days, until nightfall on the solar-powered spacecraft. But with Ulysses tilted at an angle, its solar panels were not in the ideal orientation to collect sunlight and generate power.
The company suggested earlier this week that declining power could end landing operations on Tuesday. This statement was premature and the schedule changed several times after that.
Engineers toiled over the weekend trying to speed up communications with Ulysses and retrieve data.
On Wednesday, the story of how Odysseus made it to the ground without crashing to pieces became even more incredible.
Intuitive Machines had already revealed that the laser instrument on Odysseus to measure his altitude during the descent was not working. The safety mechanisms to prevent the lasers from being accidentally fired at Earth had never been removed.
In the hours before landing, engineers hastily rewrote the guidance software on Ulysses to use altitude readings from a more advanced but still experimental laser device that NASA was testing on that flight.
But the programmers overlooked a point in the software that needed to be updated, and the spacecraft’s computer ignored the altitude data. Thus, upon landing, Odysseus did not know exactly how high he was above the surface of the moon. However, he was able to guess its altitude based on its horizontal velocity calculated from camera images and measurements of spacecraft velocity accelerations.
“This is the first time anyone has used this algorithm and it exceeded expectations, because we lived to tell,” Mr Altemus said.
Last Thursday, it was not immediately apparent that Ulysses had reached operational status.
For several anxious minutes after the landing time passed, Intuitive Machines flight controllers waited for a radio signal from the lander to confirm that it had reached its destination in the lunar south pole region. When the signal was detected, it was faint, indicating that the spacecraft’s antennae were pointing away from Earth.
The next day, Intuitive Machines officials revealed that Ulysses had capsized after hitting the ground harder than planned. Instead of making a perfectly vertical landing, Odysseus still went sideways as he touched down.
Mr. Altemus showed a photo taken at the time of the landing.
“This is a picture of Odie on the surface of the moon, touching down with his engine firing,” he said. “You see here, the landing gear, pieces that have broken off there on the left of the picture.”
Intuitive Machines was never able to fully overcome the communications slowdown caused by the faulty antennas, and NASA, which paid Intuitive Machines $118 million to put six instruments on the lunar surface, did not collect as much scientific data as it had hoped. But the mission was not a total loss.
Tim Crain, Intuitive Machines’ chief technology officer, said Wednesday that Odysseus sent back 350 megabytes of science and engineering data.
Dr. Crain also described other malfunctions that Ulysses suffered, including a startracker that initially failed to locate stars and an engine that appeared to be out of balance, as well as reaching the moon in the wrong orbit. Every time, Intuitive Machines engineers found solutions.
For NASA, the partial success provided some validation for its strategy of relying on commercial companies to deliver its instruments, rather than building and operating the spacecraft itself.
“We now have this evidence” that such missions can work, said Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA’s science mission directorate.
The hope is that such companies will be able to launch faster at a fraction of the cost of traditional NASA-run missions, and that they could push businesses to expand into lunar space — the region that stretches from Earth to orbit of the moon.
“We have fundamentally changed the economics of landing on the moon,” Mr. Altemus said, “and opened the door to a strong, thriving lunar economy in the future.”
Space Agency officials such as Dr. Cairns have said they expected some of these low-cost missions to fail, especially early attempts.
Odysseus may wake up in a few weeks when the sun rises again. Dr. Crain said it’s possible the solar panels will still be able to generate power, but the rest of the Ulysses may not make it through the two weeks of the lunar night, when temperatures drop to about minus 250 degrees Fahrenheit.
“The number one limiter we face is batteries,” Dr. Crain said. “This chemistry does not respond well to deep cold.”
The batteries, computer and radios on Odysseus were not tested to determine if they would still function after a long cold spell.
But it can. A Japanese lunar lander, also solar powered, revived over the weekend after he made it through the lunar night.
Perhaps an even bigger challenge for Intuitive Machines may be convincing Wall Street.
Intuitive Machines went public last year through a merger with a shell company. The price of its shares, which trade under the symbol LUNR, soared to about $40 a year ago, but fell a month later and has yet to fully recover. The stock price soared this month, to more than $10, as Ulysses headed for the moon, but this week, it has fallen back to below $6, down more than 30 percent since the landing.
The company’s stock price is volatile because company insiders cannot trade its stock for a certain period of time after the company goes public. That leaves the value of stocks more vulnerable to headline-based shocks, said Andres Sheppard, an analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald. Retail investors appeared spooked after the announcement that the spacecraft had landed sideways, sending the stock price down about 34 percent on Monday, the first day of trading after the announcement.
“We strongly disagree with this, but obviously our voice is not the loudest at the moment,” Mr Shepard said. His company raised its forecast for Intuitive Machines after landing.
That the spacecraft landed at all is a good sign for the company, Mr. Shepard said. One of its two main revenue streams is contracts to deliver cargo to the moon for NASA and private customers. It can make about $130 million per mission, and the landing — regardless of the spacecraft’s orientation — paves the way for more missions in the future.
“It’s transformative for the business,” said Austin Moeller, an analyst at Canaccord Genuity. “It was a very important moment for the company to be able to demonstrate its technical prowess.”
At the press conference, Mr. Altemous was also optimistic.
“I am encouraged about the future of the US economy.” said Mr. Altemus. “I am bold about the future of a permanent human presence on the moon, and I am encouraged about the future of Intuitive Machines.”
J. Edward Moreno contributed to the report.
