by For the second time in less than a week, a privately built US spaceship ship ended up on the moon – but it was not a perfect touchdown.
Intuitive machines that built the Mondlander based in Texas said on Thursday that it does not yet know whether the vehicle is correct.
Steve Altemus, the company’s CEO, said in a message that it had offered contradictory data from the lander, called Athena, whether it was upright or called on his side. Athena’s precise place on the surface of the lunar is also not yet known.
The intensive spaceship in dishwasher size was aimed at a plateau on a huge, flat mountain named Mons Mouton in the southern polar region of the moon.
“I think we are near the landing site,” said Altemus.
He added that images from the lander and photos that NASAS took the moon enlightener who circles the moon will help find out the orientation of the spacecraft in the coming days.
Despite the uncertain result, Altemus said that flight controls were able to send and receive data from the spacecraft that he has landed.
The Athena Lunar Lander.
It was a busy week on the moon: Another robot-lander building from Firefly Aerospace, which is also located in Texas, was on Sunday on the moon surface in a 350 mile wide basin on the nearby side of the moon (the side that always faces the earth).
Both the intuitive machines and the Firefly Aerospace missions are part of the Commercial Lunar Payoad Services program of NASA, which the agency has set up to support the development of Mondlander by private sector companies. More than a dozen US companies take part in the initiative to return an essential part of the wider goal of NASA to return astronauts to the moon.
Finally, NASA plans to hire at least some of the companies to deliver science experiments, technology and other freight to the moon.
“I think we can all agree, especially today, that the landing on the moon is extremely difficult,” said Nicola Fox, Associate Administrator of the Directorate for NASA’s science mission during the briefing on Thursday.
The Athena Lander started on February 26 and spent the last week to the moon. The mission aimed to search about a week after the possible presence of water ice below the surface of the moon.
It was the second lunar shot for intuitive machines. The company wrote history in February 2024 by the first to land a commercially built spaceship on the moon. However, this lander called Odysseus after landing on the side.
The flight was still considered a success and was the first time that an American spaceship had ended up on the moon for more than 50 years – since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
Odysseus also aimed at the southern polar region of the moon and landed near a crater called Malapert A near the moon south of the south.
Scientists believe that water ice may be relatively abundant on the moon South Pole. Water is considered a critical resource for future occupation missions to the moon, especially for potential long -term stays there.
Athena carried several rovers with the moon with the moon, including a vehicle built by the Lunar Outpost company called Mappe in a suitcase size (short for mobile autonomous prospecting platform). The rover was developed to walk around the landing site and take 3D pictures of the site.
In addition, it was expected that a rover developed by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the size of the “Astroant” on the roof of the Mapp Rover to evaluate the health of the vehicle and take over temperature values.
In addition, Mission Controller planned to publish a drone that called Grace to make a series of hops around Athena’s landing site. The robot was expected to cover around 650 feet in four hops and, according to intuitive machines, was able to explore a nearby crater after traces of hydrogen and ice deposits.
The plan for Athena on the surface of the moon also called for testing a 4G communication system developed by Nokia. Company officials said that such a network could be used to pass on communication, telemetry or other data between different space vehicles on the moon.
Altemus said that Mission Controllers were able to switch on and off Athena’s onboard experiments, but still no complete understanding of the health of all payloads. The company still hopes to complete at least some of the mission goals, he said, but they will be “nominal”.
“If we receive this full rating, we will work closely with the NASA science and technology groups to identify scientific goals that are the highest priority,” he said.
Regardless of the result of Athena Mission, Moonmania will not end this week: This summer, a Lander and Tiny Rover developed by a Japanese company called ISPACE will try to land on the moon near the center of a huge pool near the north pole of the moon called Mare Frigoris.
This article was originally published on nbcnews.com
