Odysseus moon lander operational but with battery in its final hours

Odysseus, the first US spacecraft to land on the moon since 1972, neared the end of its fifth day on the lunar surface operational, but with its battery in its final hours before the vehicle is expected to go dark, according to flight controllers.

Texas-based Intuitive Machines said in an online update on Tuesday that its control centre in Houston, Texas remained in contact with the lander as it “efficiently sent payload science data and imagery in furtherance of the company's mission objectives”.

The spacecraft reached the lunar surface last Thursday after an 11th-hour navigational glitch and white-knuckle descent that ended with Odysseus landing in a sideways or sharply tilted position that has impeded its communications and solar-charging capability.

Intuitive Machines said the next day human error was to blame for the navigational issue. Flight readiness teams had neglected to manually unlock a safety switch before launch, preventing subsequent activation of the vehicle's laser-guided range finders and forcing flight engineers to hurriedly improvise an alternative during lunar orbit.

An Intuitive executive told Reuters on Saturday the safety switch lapse stemmed from the company's decision to forgo a test firing of the laser system during pre-launch checks to save time and money.

Whether failure of the range finders and last-minute substitution of a work-around ultimately caused Odysseus to land in an off-kilter manner remained an open question, according to Intuitive officials.

Nevertheless, the company said last Friday two of the spacecraft's communication antennae were knocked out of commission and pointed the wrong way, and its solar panels were facing the wrong direction, limiting the vehicle's ability to recharge its batteries.

As a consequence, Intuitive said on Monday it expected to lose contact with Odysseus on Tuesday morning, cutting short the mission that held a dozen science instruments for Nasa and several commercial customers and had been intended to operate on the moon for seven to 10 days.

On Tuesday morning Intuitive said controllers were “working on final determination of battery life on the lander, which may continue up to an additional 10 to 20 hours”.

The latest update from the company indicated the spacecraft might last for six days before the sun sets over the landing site.

The company's shares closed 7% higher on Tuesday. The stock plummeted last week after news the spacecraft had landed askew.

It remained to be seen how much research data and imagery from payloads might go uncollected because of Odysseus' cockeyed landing and shortened lunar lifespan.

Nasa paid Intuitive $118m (about R2.3bn) to build and fly Odysseus.

Nasa chief Bill Nelson told Reuters on Tuesday he understood agency scientists expected to retrieve some data from all six of its payloads. He said Odysseus apparently landed beside a crater wall and was leaning at a 12-degree angle, though it was not clear whether that meant 12 degrees from the surface or 12 degrees from an upright position.

Intuitive executives said on February 23 engineers believed Odysseus had caught the foot of one of its landing legs on the lunar surface as it neared touchdown and tipped over before coming to rest horizontally, apparently propped up on a rock.

No photos from Odysseus on the lunar surface have been transmitted yet. But an image from an orbiting Nasa spacecraft released on Monday showed the lander as a tiny speck near its intended destination in the moon's south pole region.

Despite its less-than-ideal touchdown, Odysseus became the first US spacecraft to land on the moon since Nasa's last crewed Apollo mission to the lunar surface in 1972.

It was also the first lunar landing ever by a commercially manufactured and operated space vehicle, and the first under Nasa's Artemis programme, which aims to return astronauts to Earth's natural satellite this decade.