Incredible story of the historic U.S. moon lander is officially over after long, cold night

Intuitive Machines, a Houston-based space exploration company that is behind the first U.S. moon landing in over 50 years, finally concluded the IM-1 mission.

Its lander Odysseus soft-landed on the surface of the Moon back in February, after suffering a lot of troubles on the way to the history books, and spent there seven days gathering scientific data.

Odysseus – or Odie, as Intuitive Machines calls him – was not designed to survive the long, cold lunar night. However, just very recently, the Japanese lander SLIM proved it possible when it unexpectedly started to communicate with the Earth in late February.

Intuitive Machines therefore hoped that with a bit of a luck, Odysseus could achieve a similar feat. Before the lander ran out of batteries, flight controllers put it into a configuration that could call home if various systems outperformed manufacturer's expectations.

However, as the company announced on Saturday, that was, unfortunately, not the case:

“Intuitive Machines started listening for Odie’s wake-up signal on March 20, when we projected enough sunlight would potentially charge the lander's power system and turn on its radio.

 

“As of March 23rd at 1030 A.M. Central Standard Time, flight controllers decided their projections were correct, and Odie’s power system would not complete another call home. This confirms that Odie has permanently faded after cementing its legacy into history as the first commercial lunar lander to land on the Moon.”

Still, Odysseus achieved a huge success, after it soft-landed on the Moon against all odds. The spacecraft was briefly lost in space just hours after the lift-off and then lost its primary navigational system for the approach and landing.

Odysseus hit the Moon, thinking that he was still 100 meters above the surface. As a result, the lander slid, broke one of its landing legs, and toppled on its side. Yet, Odysseus survived and gathered a lot of precious telemetry and scientific data to lay a healthy foundation for the upcoming IM-2 mission that is scheduled for late 2024.

Image: Intuitive Machines

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