Intuitive Machine The landing module managed to land this Thursday Nova-C Athena On the moon, but things seem not having gone as good as it was supposed to First moment. As happened a year ago with its first lunar module, OdysseusAthena is likely You have not landed in a vertical position and you are sideways on the lunar surface.
‘We do not believe that we are in the right position on the surface of the moon, once again. We will obtain an image of the orbital chamber of lunar recognition from above and We will confirm it in the next few days’said the CEO of Intuitive Machine, Steve Altemusduring the press conference after landing.
The data of the Athena inertial measurement unit indicate that ‘We are a little oriented sideways’according to Altemus. Athena landed only a few days after the private landing module also did on the moon Blue Ghostdeveloped by Firefly Aerospacewho did ‘In a vertical and stable configuration’ On March 2.
The mission IM-2 It is part of the Intuitive Machine association with the POT For future missions crew to the Moon. Athena was thrown aboard a rocket Falcon 9 of Spacex On February 26 and has 11 useful charges and scientific instruments designed for find evidence of water on the lunar surface.
The Athena landing module is communicating with the mission team on Earth, but the performance is not optimal, What can shorten the useful life of ten days from Athena.
‘We have taken some energy conservation measures As prudent measures to see how much time and what objectives we can achieve in the mission in the future, ‘Altemus said. ‘It will be out of the nominal, because We are not obtaining everything we had asked in terms of energy generation, communications’.
Once the orientation of the landing module is confirmed, the IM-2 team may establish how many of the useful charges and scientific instruments of Athena are completely operationalincluding a drill designed to search ice and an unmanned vehicle called Gracewhich aims to explore a crater permanently in shadow.