Washington:

An American lunar lander that tipped over during touchdown has sent back its first images from the farthest south any vessel has ever landed on the Moon.

The uncrewed Odysseus, built by Houston-based Intuitive Machines, returned the United States to Earth’s cosmic neighbor last week after a five-decade absence, in a first for the private sector.

But one of its legs caught on the surface as it came down, making it pitch over in the final act of a drama-packed journey that was saved by an improvised fix.

“Odysseus continues to communicate with flight controllers in Nova Control from the lunar surface,” Intuitive Machines said Monday in an update on X.

The post included two pictures: one from the hexagon-shaped spaceship’s descent, and the other taken 35 seconds after it fell over, revealing the pockmarked soil of the Malapert A impact crater.

Odysseus captured this image approximately 35 seconds after pitching over during its approach to the landing site. The camera is on the starboard aft-side of the lander in this phase. 2/5 (26FEB2024 0745 CST) pic.twitter.com/oUcjk3bCqW

— Intuitive Machines (@Int_Machines) February 26, 2024

NASA is planning to return astronauts to the Moon later this decade, and paid Intuitive Machines around $120 million for the mission, as part of a new initiative to delegate cargo missions to the private sector and stimulate a commercial lunar economy.

Odysseus carries a suite of NASA instruments designed to improve scientific understanding of the lunar south pole, where the space agency plans to send astronauts under its Artemis program later this decade.

Unlike during Apollo, the plan is to build long-term habitats, harvesting polar ice for drinking water and for rocket fuel for onward missions to Mars.

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) probe meanwhile photographed the 4.0-meter (13 feet) tall “Nova-C” class lander on Saturday at a spot within 1.5 kilometers (a mile) of its intended landing site.

Flight controllers intend to collect data until the lander’s solar panels are no longer exposed to light. Based on Earth and Moon positioning, we believe flight controllers will continue to communicate with Odysseus until Tuesday morning. Image credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State… pic.twitter.com/FFt8CXZPIC

— Intuitive Machines (@Int_Machines) February 26, 2024

The student team behind an external camera that was initially meant to shoot out from Odysseus during its descent said in a weekend update they remained “optimistic” EagleCam could still be ejected from the fallen lander and snap photos from around four meters away.

Astronomer and space missions expert Jonathan McDowell told AFP the fact that Odysseus was lying on its side didn’t overly concern him.

It’s a “success with minor footnotes — I’d give it an A minus,” he said, adding that one would “prefer it to be upright, and they’ve certainly got some things to figure out for future missions,” but overall things are moving in the right direction for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.

On Friday, Intuitive Machines revealed its engineers had forgotten to toggle a safety switch that prevented the spaceship’s laser-guided landing system from engaging, which forced them to upload a software patch and rely on an experimental NASA system to save the day.

“Rocket science is hard not because any one thing is super hard, but because you have to do a million easy things all right,” said McDowell of the “embarrassing” oversight.

Flight controllers will continue to download data until the lander’s solar panels are no longer exposed to light, which is now estimated to be Tuesday morning, said Intuitive Machines.

It is a slightly shorter mission duration than initially planned, likely as a result of the spacecraft’s awkward orientation.

Japan’s space agency also landed a spaceship wonkily on the Moon last month, but produced a surprise on Monday by waking up its SLIM lander following the lunar night, which lasts around two Earth weeks.

McDowell said the two falls might indicate the current generation of landers are too top heavy and consequently tip over too easily in low gravity, unlike the short, squat landers with splayed legs built by the United States and Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Intuitive Machines joined an exclusive club of five countries that have achieved soft lunar landings: the Soviet Union, the United States, China, India, and Japan. Three prior private attempts failed, including by another American company, Astrobotic, last month.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off on the IM-1 mission with the Nova-C moon lander built and owned by Intuitive Machines from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., on February 15, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The moon lander dubbed Odysseus is “alive and well” but resting on its side a day after a white-knuckle touchdown as the first private spacecraft ever to reach the lunar surface, and the first from the United States since 1972, the company behind the vehicle said on Friday.

The chief executive officer of Houston-based Intuitive Machines, which built and flew the lander, said the vehicle is believed to have caught one of its six landing feet on the lunar surface during its final descent and tipped over, coming to rest propped up sideways on a rock.

Still, CEO Stephen Altemus said Odysseus “is stable near or at our intended landing site” near a crater called Malapert A in the region of the moon’s south pole.

“We do have communications with the lander” and sending commands to the vehicle, Altemus said, adding that teams were working to obtain the first photo images from the lunar surface at the landing site.

A brief update on the mission’s status posted to the company’s website earlier on Friday described Odysseus “alive and well.”

The company had said shortly after touchdown on Thursday that radio signals indicated Odysseus had landed in an upright position, but Atlemus said that faulty conclusion was based on telemetry from before the landing.

Intuitive Machines mission director Tim Crain said the spacecraft, burning a propulsion fuel of liquid methane and liquid oxygen for the first time in space, “performed flawlessly” during its flight to the moon.

Altemus said the spacecraft was recharging properly from solar energy and was charged at 100%.

The six-legged, uncrewed robot spacecraft reached the lunar surface on Thursday after a nail-biting final approach and descent in which a problem surfaced with the lander’s navigation system, requiring engineers on the ground to employ an untested work-around at the 11th hour.

It also took some time after an anticipated radio blackout to re-establish communications with the spacecraft and determine its fate some 239,000 miles (384,000 km) from Earth.

When contact was finally renewed, the signal was faint, confirming that the lander had touched down but leaving mission control immediately uncertain as to the precise condition and position of the vehicle, company officials said during a webcast of the event on Thursday evening.

The lander is carrying a suite of scientific experiments for NASA and several commercial customers designed to operate for seven days on solar energy before the sun sets over the polar landing site.