Odysseus Lunar Lander
 

Launched on a Falcon 9 last week, due to attempt its lunar landing tonight.

Odysseus, @Int_Machines’ uncrewed Moon lander, is targeted to touch down at the lunar South Pole at 5:30pm ET (2230 UTC) Feb. 22. Watch live with us as this Moon delivery brings science instruments to study the region.

https://go.nasa.gov/49Dw6bW

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....6df7dbf777.png
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Touch down confirmed. Just waiting for telemetry data and photos to be broadcast. Good job well done.

Yes, well done. But disappointing that there was nothing at all to watch Despite all the YouTube channels advertising 'Watch the Landing' all I saw was the control room and cgi animations (or is there video and I missed it).

NASA managed to provide live video from the Apollo landings. You'd think it would be easy now?

D

They’re a commercial organisation selling ride-share slots, not a TV station - if NASA want video they’ll have to pay.

IM are building a lunar comms satellite network as well as lunar landers, rovers and hoppers as well as delivery to lunar orbit.

Big player with little visibility just because they use SpaceX instead of building their own rockets.

https://www.intuitivemachines.com/lunar-access-services

https://spaceref.com/press-release/n...loads-in-2024/

There was never any live video of the actual Apollo landings as viewed from the spacecraft.

If you watched the Apollo landings on TV at the time you actually got pretty much the same presentation as last night - one or two wide angle views of the Mission Operations Control Room, plus the odd (sometimes very odd) animation and the occasional glimpse of the pundits in the studio...

The Apollo LM descent and landing footage that has made it into the various documentaries, films and onto the web over the years was taken with a film camera looking out of the LM pilot's window....that film was returned to Earth and got released to the news agencies maybe a week or so after the landing.

Live TV coverage from the surface itself actually started well after the landing, usually shortly after the commencement of the first EVA.

FWIW the last three Apollo missions carried the Lunar Rover which had an TV system completely independent from the LM. That was left operating after the astronauts has stepped off the surface for the last time and so was able to provide live footage of the LM liftoff from the Lunar Surface.

I believe Neil Armstrong stepping off Apollo 11 onto the moon was broadcast live (other beliefs are available :))

...and I can remember watching what seemed to be interminable footage of the moon surface passing slowly underneath a spacecraft. That could have been from the orbiter rather than the landing module and I don't remember which mission it was but I'm sure it was live. It was too boring to be a documentary.

Either way it was 50 years ago now and was assuming we'd get to see some similar but less blurry footage.

I take ORAC's point about this being a commercial operation and I can see that there's much less general interest now so I guess it wasn't worth the candle.

Broadcasting from Nevada is a lot easier than from the moon! 🤣

netstruggler:

"I take ORAC's point about this being a commercial operation and I can see that there's much less general interest now so I guess it wasn't worth the candle."

Might be a cost thing, OTOH it could be that data capacity /bandwidth might have been limiting - only enough for the essentials, not for imaging..

Anyhow hoping that the Eaglecam worked as planned, if it did those images will be spectacular...fingers crossed.

https://erau.edu/eaglecam

The camera was attached to the side of the LEM. The astronauts pulled a lever to release it from its stowage. It dropped into position aimed at the ladder. That was broadcast 'live' via The Parks Observatory in Australia. The film The Dish is worth watching for this bit.

Ref the previously mentioned Eaglecam...according to a press release sadly it wasn't deployed before touchdown.


"EagleCam Update: Camera System Deployment ForthcomingDue to complications with Odysseus’ internal navigation system — specifically concerning the software patch to navigation data to include NASA’s NDL (Navigation Doppler Lidar) payload, which is meant to ensure a soft landing — the decision was made to power down EagleCam during landing and not deploy the device during Odysseus’ final descent.

However, both the Intuitive Machines and EagleCam teams still plan to deploy EagleCam and capture images of the lander on the lunar surface as the mission continues.

The time of deployment is currently unknown.

Stay tuned! More information will be released as soon as it becomes available."

https://news.erau.edu/headlines/eagl...-lands-on-moon

It tripped. Face planted. Snagged a rock and is now in a position previously managed by the Japanese but without the major engine failure.

"I've fallen and I can't get up."

At least the Japanese managed to have the pop-away camera so that the plight of the main platform was clearly known.

It has been reported that they had an external camera but did not deploy it.

I wonder if a self-righting feature, such as performing a last-second jets-upward flipover, with a hemispherical lander base giving a low centre of gravity, might solve their puzzle of how to get the thing to stand upright? Or would thick lunar sand make that a no-go? They would have problems taking off again on later missions, that's for sure.

I suspect the external camera was the EagleCam mentioned just upthread ... that was supposed to be popped off the vehicle at very low altitude to take some pics of the actual lander in flight just before touchdown but wasn't deployed (as per the press release). Even if it had been deployed as planned AFAIK the images wouldn't have been sent back to Earth in real time....


Very old tech, been done....that's how the Soviets cracked the problem with the very very first Lunar soft lander, Luna 9, back in 1966...however the lander element of that vehicle that thing was the size of a beachball (link to info on that at foot of post) , I'm not sure how well the technique would work with larger vehicles or as you say be compatible with something designed to take-off again. Properly designed landing gear has worked fine for Surveyor, Apollo and quite a few later landers.

The surface layer of fine dust, which has a consistency more like talc than sand, hasn't been found to be particularly thick anywhere. I think the general experience from the Apollo missions was no more than maybe 10 cm depth most places....

Luna 9





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No like button here, so thank you kindly for the considered responses.

From what I can gather one of the biggest problems in the polar areas is that it's very rocky and uneven. The earlier missions had the luxury of choosing flat open areas, but even then Neil Armstrong had to take manual control to avoid a rocky area.

But this was known long before the "Odysseus" lander was designed. One can seriously ask the question why the designers placed the centre of gravity so high, that the maximum permissible slope of the landing ground is 10 degrees.

Once Apollo 12 demonstrated spot landings were possible later Apollos went into some uneven sites (Apollo14 and 15) and also some very terrain constrained and mountainous sites…(Apollos 16 and 17 in particular).

There were a whole raft of reasons unrelated to terrain as to why high latitude sites can be tricky to access, especially if the arrival will be preceded by a period in lunar orbit, some of it tied in with facets of orbital mechanics, some of it down to requirements for tracking of a lander either pre-landing or in the event of a return, on the climb-out..it’s also fair to say until the last couple of decades the very high latitude areas weren’t well mapped in 3D.

What has changed matters in the recent years is the suspicion there may be easily available water at high latitudes, so the potential rewards of going to the poles outweigh the increased difficulty of landing there verses landing at equatorial sites.

Lots of parts of the Moon, even in the Lunar highlands, are relatively flat.

I suppose the answer to your question might be that the designers were confident their fancy automated landing system could sense and avoid landing on a spot where the slope was > 10 degrees..I’m only guessing but maybe having a need to cater for a higher tilt limit would place undesirable constraints on other aspects of the landers design….

The report is it was still going sideways when one or more landing legs hit a rock or other obstruction causing it to flip.