The IM-1 Moon landing mission will come to a premature end on Tuesday morning. Intuitive Machines has announced that the Odysseus lander will no longer be able to charge its batteries by February 27 as sunlight stops falling on its solar panels.
Today's announcement is a bittersweet end for a mission that survived tipping over on landing and the failure of a vital navigation system due to human error. When 'Odie' touched down on the Moon on February 22, it did so with the aid of a NASA experimental navigation system that had been patched into the lander's software as the spacecraft approached the Moon.
It was an impressive bit of improvisation, but it turns out that the reason why this had to be done was due to a simple human oversight. The Nova-C class lander's landing navigation system relied on lasers to estimate speed, direction, and position. Unfortunately, these lasers posed a hazard to the eyes of prelaunch technicians, so the system couldn't be programmed to activate automatically. Instead, a physical switch had to be thrown before launch.
But, it wasn't.
Despite these setbacks, the flight engineers have managed to maintain communications with Odysseus and have retrieved new images from the lander. Some of these were taken by Odie during its lunar approach, and they show nine safe potential landing sites as well as an area with permanently shadowed craters that may contain water ice and other resources.
In addition, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera team have spied Odysseus on the Moon's surface and conformed its position as 80.13° S and 1.44° E, which is 1.5 km (one mile) from its intended Malapert A landing site – the closest landing yet to the lunar south pole.
Though the IM-1 mission has been less than perfect and is ending over a week earlier than hoped, Intuitive Machines has emphasized that its landers are not one-off exploration vehicles. They are designed to be commercial workhorses for carrying payloads for government and private customers to the Moon at much lower costs than NASA vehicles, so the loss of one spacecraft on one mission is seen as an acceptable trade-off.
Source: Intuitive Machines
It must have been a cost cutting measure to not have remote control over laser power.
Calculated risks were treated as such: risks but not probable. This way they could make progress, even after the fire of Apollo 1.
That such a safety related issue stops the whole mission here, is typical for today´s attitude.
The spacecraft was made so safe for the engineers on earth (which are obviously are not treated as adults by their company),
that it could not be made to work its mission on the Moon. Perfect.
Reminds me on the Goodwill messages transportet to the Moon by Apollo 11 on a small silicone disc:
"May the high courage and the technical genius which made this achievement possible be so used in the future that mankind will live in a universe in which
peace, self expression, and the chance of dangerous adventure are available to all.
John Gorton
Prime Minister of Australia"
No chance for a dangerous adventure was given here...
Also curious that with the supposedly cost of each ounce sent to space they would launch the device with a physical switch which was only meant for ground test use.
launch checklist anyone?
Apparently on the next launch its been propose that Heath and Safety dept will need to check under the rocket if the engines are firing safely....