The Intuitive Machines Nova-C lunar lander likely tipped over when touching down on the moon Feb. 22 and is now resting on its side.
In a televised media teleconference Feb. 23, nearly 24 hours after the IM-1 mission landed on the moon, company officials said they believed the lander, 4.3 meters tall and 1.6 meters in diameter, is resting on its side a few kilometers from its intended landing site near the Malapert A crater in the south polar regions of the moon.
The lander “caught a foot in the surface, and the lander has tipped,” said Steve Altemus, chief executive of Intuitive Machines, illustrating the status of the lander with a small model of it.
He suggested that was caused by the lander coming down faster than expected. The lander’s final descent was supposed to be straight down at about one meter per second, but was instead descending at about three times that velocity with about one meter per second of lateral motion.
“If you catch a foot, we might have fractured that landing gear and tipped over gently,” he said. The lander appears to be resting on a rock, elevating it slightly above the surface, based on the power it is generating; he said the foot could also be in a crevice.
Intuitive Machines had reported a couple hours after the landing that the lander was upright. However, Altemus said that determination was based on “stale telemetry” from fuel tanks on the lander.
The lander has yet to return images as controllers work to reconfigure radios on the spacecraft. Tim Crain, chief technology officer of Intuitive Machines, said they are still determining what data rates they can get with the lander on its side and some antennas thus not usable. “We expect to get most of the mission data down once we stabilize our configuration,” he said.
Fortunately, the only payload mounted on the side of the lander now facing the surface is a static payload: an artwork provided by artist Jeff Koons. Other commercial and NASA payloads are operating, and many of them collected data during the flight to the moon and during the descent to the surface.
One of those NASA payloads may have saved the mission. Engineers were able to use data from the Navigation Doppler Lidar instrument developed at NASA’s Langley Research Center to replace laser rangefinders on the lander that were not working.
For the complete article on the lunar lander CLICK HERE.
Note – If you liked this post click here to stay informed of all of the 3D laser scanning, geomatics, UAS, autonomous vehicle, Lidar News and more. If you have an informative 3D video that you would like us to promote, please forward to editor@lidarnews.com and if you would like to join the Younger Geospatial Professional movement click here
