The Odysseus module, which has about six hours of autonomous life left on its sixth day of mission on the surface molewill be disconnected shortly with the aim of trying to “wake it up” in the next two or three weeksIntuitive Machines, the private company that manufactured the ship, reported this Wednesday at a press conference.
“We are going to put 'Odie' to sleep and hope to wake him up in about two or three weeks for various tests”, announced at the conference the co-founder of Intuitive Machines, Steve Altemus, who described the “pioneer mission” of the Odysseus module as a “wild success”, despite the mishap that occurred during its landing on the moon last Thursday.
Altemus, scientists from his company and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, for its acronym in English). expressed today at a press conference from the Johnson Space Center, in Houston, their excitement for the achievements achieved in this mission with the first American spacecraft to land on the lunar surface in more than 50 years. years, since Apollo 17 in 1972.
It is also the first private mission to successfully land on our natural satellite.
Altemus highlighted the gigantic amount of data, photographs and information that Odysseus has been transmitting. “It's just an incredible testament to the robustness of the spacecraft, and we're very pleased,” said.
He indicated that, at some point, “solar energy generation will not allow us to continue sending telemetry” from the module, which is located 80 degrees south of the lunar South Pole, but “we will put 'Odie' to sleep” to try to “resurrect him.” ” later, when the sun illuminates your solar panel again.
“This is something that has never been done before and they (NASA) believed in us,” so we are “very proud, particularly of our cryogenic propulsion system,” the first time it has been done, and the ignition in methyl oxygen deep space, also for the first time, said Tim Crain, chief technology officer at Intuitive Machines.
Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA's Science Mission Directorate, congratulated the entire Intuitive Machines team on this mission “of many others” to come.
Kearns highlighted that this is the first time in the 21st century that a private company from the United States “has landed engineering and science equipment and data on the lunar surface” and we are obtaining very valuable information.
He was excited to be able to experience the “sixth day of this new era of the 21st century,” after Odysseus made a “soft landing” on the moon, something he described as a “great achievement.”
“If anyone is wondering if NASA considers this mission a success, my answer is yes,” this mission is “pioneering” and can be interpreted as “a flight test, a first step to return to the Moon,” said Kearns. .
The experts present at the conference, including Sue Lederer, a NASA scientist, agreed that the Odysseus mission is a “pioneer” in the development of the “most complicated and sophisticated robotic science” and that it will help obtain data to “take human explorers back to the Moon.”
In addition, the mission confirms that the “lunar payload services business model” works with a private company.
The lander carried NASA scientific instruments to the Moon's South Pole region as part of the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative and campaign Artemis.
Odysseus, which landed on the satellite last Thursday, has been “efficiently sending images and scientific data from the payload” that are part of the mission, which the Texas-based company has called IM-1.
The US space agency has spent about $118 million for the transport of scientific and technological instruments contained in six payloads, which are part of the twelve payloads that the company's Nova-C series module carries in its interior.
The area where the module landed is one of the thirteen candidate regions for the lunar landing of NASA's Artemis III manned mission, scheduled for September 2026.
The space agency believes that in this unexplored region there could be deposits of frozen water.