The lunar probe Ulysses tilted sideways on the lunar surface

The lunar rover named Odysseus is “alive and well” but resting on its side a day after its white-knuckle landing as the first private spacecraft ever to reach the lunar surface and the first from the US since 1972, the company behind the vehicle he said Friday.

Houston-based Intuitive Machines ( LUNR.O ) revealed that human error led to the failure of the spacecraft’s laser rangefinders, how engineers spotted the error by chance hours before landing time and how they improvised an emergency fix that saved the mission from a possible crash.

Although Odysseus reached the surface Thursday intact, data analysis by flight engineers showed the six-foot craft tripped over its legs as it neared the end of its final descent, company officials said in a briefing the next day.

The spacecraft is believed to have caught one of its landing legs on the uneven lunar surface and flipped over, landing on its side, resting on a rock at one end, said CEO Stephen Altemus, whose company built and flew the lander.

However, all indications are that Ulysses “is stable near or at our intended landing site,” near a crater called Malapert A in the Moon’s south pole region, Altemus told reporters.

“We do have communications with the lander,” and mission control operators are sending commands to the vehicle, Altemus said, adding that they are working to get the first pictures of the lunar surface from the landing site.

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

The company had said shortly after Thursday’s landing that radio signals indicated Ulysses, a 13-foot-tall hexagonal cylinder, had landed upright, but Altemus said the flawed conclusion was based on pre-landing telemetry.

The downside of italics

Although the sideways landing position was far from ideal, company officials said that all but one of the six NASA science and technology payloads were placed in sections of the vehicle that were left exposed and receptive to communications, “which very good for us,” Altemus said. .

“We believe we can meet all commercial payload needs,” he added.

However, two of the spacecraft’s antennas remained pointed at the surface, a circumstance that will limit communications with the grounder, Altemus said.

Also, the functionality of a solar power panel on top of Ulysses, now facing the wrong way, is uncertain, but a second array on the side of the spacecraft appears to be working and the spacecraft’s batteries were fully charged. he said.

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The unmanned robotic spacecraft reached the lunar surface on Thursday after a nail-biting final approach and descent in which a problem appeared with its navigation system, requiring flight controllers on the ground to use an untested solution to avoid which could have been a disastrous emergency landing.

The original laser-powered range finders had been rendered inoperable because the company’s engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida accidentally failed to unlock a safety switch before the craft’s launch into space last Thursday, Altemus said.

“That was an oversight on our part,” he said, likening the overlooked switch to a safety mechanism on a firearm.

The problem was discovered by chance only a week later during the lunar orbit, with a few hours left before landing, when flight controllers were experiencing a different problem.

Otherwise, they might have realized the safety lock was still on when it came time to activate the range finders during the final five minutes of descent, mission manager Tim Crain said.

Tensions rose as engineers determined that existing software on the spacecraft could not bypass the safety lock to activate the distance probes, company officials said.

Ultimately, engineers tried to write software that steered the craft instead of relying on an experimental NASA Lidar payload — a remote-sensing system that uses rapid pulses of laser-like light and their reflections to judge distances between objects.

Intended for use only as a technology demonstration, as well as a potential backup, NASA’s Lidar saved the day, albeit under extreme pressure.

“These are extremely high stakes,” said former SpaceX mission manager Abhi Tripathi. “The mission director has to make sure that everyone is doing their job and doing their job perfectly, almost like a conductor.”

Crain’s said the spacecraft, burning a liquid methane and liquid oxygen propellant for the first time in space, “performed flawlessly” during its seven-day flight to and in orbit around the moon.

The condition of Odysseus was murky immediately after he landed. It took some time after an expected radio blackout to restore communications with the spacecraft and determine its fate some 239,000 miles (384,000 km) from Earth.

When contact was finally reestablished, the signal was faint, confirming that the lander had landed but leaving mission control immediately unsure of the vehicle’s exact condition and location, company officials said during an evening webcast of the event. of Thursday.

Crain said he believed the payloads on the lander could operate for about nine or 10 days, after which the sun would have set on the polar landing site.

Shares of Intuitive Machines fell 30% in extended trading Friday, wiping out all of Friday’s market rally after the company said its Moon Lander had crashed.