Last signals from the moon | Odysseus has used up almost all of his energy reserves

The mission report will be submitted by Texas-based Intuitive Machines, a company that NASA paid $118 million to build a robot that will land and fly on the lunar surface.
Odysseus, the first U.S. spacecraft to land on the moon in half a century, used up nearly all of its energy reserves Thursday as scientists listened for the final signals from this multimillion-dollar mission to gather invaluable data.

The spacecraft landed on the lunar surface a week ago, and its operators hoped to be able to operate for up to 10 days. However, the clumsy side landing damaged the solar chargers and cut off communication with the spacecraft.

The mission report will be submitted by Texas-based Intuitive Machines, a company that NASA paid $118 million to build a robot that will land and fly on the lunar surface.

The nearly four-meter-tall Nova-C spacecraft launched on February 15 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Florida, on a Falcon 9 rocket provided by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. It began orbiting the moon six days after launch.

The six-armed spacecraft touched down on the lunar surface last Thursday after an 11-hour navigational failure and descent that ended with Odysseus landing in a steeply tilted position, which had an immediate effect on Earth operators’ communications with the spacecraft.

Intuitive Machines said the next day that human error had caused the navigation problem.
The operating teams neglected to manually unlock the safety switch before launch, which subsequently prevented the vehicle from being laser activated. Therefore, the flight engineers had to urgently come up with an alternative during the flight in the lunar orbit.

The company said last Friday that two of the spacecraft’s communications antennas were damaged and misaligned, and that the solar panels were facing the wrong direction, limiting the vehicle’s battery charge.

The Texas company presented a possible explanation that Odysseus hit the surface of the moon with one foot just before landing and the spacecraft flipped on its side. With this mission, Odysseus became the first American spacecraft to land on the Moon since NASA’s Apollo mission in 1972.

It is also the first landing on the moon by a commercially manufactured and manned spacecraft.

To date, only four other countries have achieved soft landings on the moon – the former Soviet Union, China, India and last month Japan, whose spacecraft also flipped on its side.

The United States is the only country that has ever sent humans to the surface of the moon.