Space Stuff and Launch Info

In summary, the SpaceX Dragon launch is upcoming, and it appears to be successful. The article has a lot of good information about the upcoming mission, as well as some interesting observations about the Great Red Spot.
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  • #1,228
Odysseus Lunar Lander tipped over according to Intuitive Machines.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/moon-lander-tipped-over-on-its-side-during-touchdown/

Apparently, the craft had a vertical speed of 6 mph (~9.7 km/h) and a horizontal speed of 2 mph (3.2 km/h). Fuel tank reading indicate that Odysseus is lying on its side. There is a thought that one of the legs may have hit something. As I recall, the Apollo craft landed without much of a horizontal drift.

Barron's wrote an article emphasizing the drop in the stock price of Intuitive Machines. The author is apparently Al Root, which I cannot tell is Artificial Intelligence (capital i) or Al (with lowercase L).
https://www.barrons.com/articles/moon-lunar-landing-odysseus-nasa-intuitive-6e97c668

https://www.space.com/intuitive-machines-odysseus-moon-lander-tipped-over

https://news.yahoo.com/moon-lander-described-alive-well-220449921.html
 
  • #1,229
The name links to the author page:
Allen Root is a senior writer at Barron’s. He spent 17 years on Wall Street and joined Barron's from broker R.W Baird, where he was the industrial strategist.

They are the first company to make a soft landing. SpaceIL tried and crashed. ispace tried and crashed. Astrobotic tried and didn't reach the Moon. Intuitive Machines succeeded, even though the orientation is wrong. The stock price dropped 30% but it's still at the level it had before the launch. They'll be fine.
 
  • #1,230
AP News - Toppled moon lander sends back more images, with only hours left until it dies
https://apnews.com/article/moon-landing-private-nasa-c00b3c7f2f1330b11d71ad6ecbc7833b

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A moon lander that ended up on its side managed to beam back more pictures, with only hours remaining before it dies.

Intuitive Machines posted new photos of the moon’s unexplored south polar region Tuesday.

The company’s lander, Odysseus, captured the shots last Thursday shortly before making the first U.S. touchdown on the moon in more than 50 years. Odysseus landed on its side, hampering communication and power generation.
 
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  • #1,232
It turns out that Odysseus landed on the Moon without any altimetry data
Interesting article by Eric Berger. The spacecraft was supposed to land with its own range finders. A few hours before the planned landing they discovered that they wouldn't work so they rewrote the software to use a hosted NASA payload for an estimate, but it could only provide data down to 15 km above the surface. The lander landed without reliable altitude measurements - at the time of touchdown it expected to be 100 meters above the surface. The mission had many more close calls, but still managed to get to the surface gently and make most of its payloads work well. The company has more landers planned.

Crew-8 is planned to fly on Dragon Friday March 1, 5:04 UTC. That's a night launch in Florida.
 
  • #1,233
How come they could land on the moon almost 55 years ago but not now?! And not since then?! :smile:

So, a "knee-jerk" landing like this is not-so-good news for possible new investors like myself. And why the software problem right at the crucial time to land, yikes?!

Maybe a lower center of gravity is needed, four rubber tires on the bottom like a '55 Chevy, maybe training wheels on the sides, even some spare Apollo retro rocket parts, these might be part of the changes needed, possibly.
 
  • #1,234
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/intuitive-machines-faces-early-end-213530800.html

Intuitive Machines’ historic landing is due in no small part to extremely quick thinking on the part of flight controllers, who had to improvise a navigation solution after they learned the spacecraft’s onboard laser range finders — which collect essential landing data, like altitude and horizontal velocity — were not working. Remarkably, they turned instead to one of the payloads on the lander, a doppler lidar technology demonstrator from NASA, to help land the vehicle on the surface.

Company officials later revealed that the laser range finders stopped working due to human error and trade-offs made to save time and money, rather than any technical issues. Engineers chose not to test fire the laser system on the ground due to cost and scheduling, Intuitive Machines’ head of navigation systems, Mike Hansen, told Reuters yesterday. Engineers also failed to toggle a physical safety switch on the system prior to launch.

Edit/update: I heard on a news program news program last night that Odysseus landed a bit too hard and one of legs broke, which caused the lander to tip over on the side with the main solar panel.
 
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  • #1,235
difalcojr said:
How come they could land on the moon almost 55 years ago but not now?!
I think a big part of it is that those missions had human pilots that could take over and do final adjustments in the landing to miss rocks and ridges and such. Apparently the autonomous systems are not quite to the human-pilot capability level yet.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/apollo-11-plus-45-how-neil-armstrong-saved-day-moon-n160386
1709141867729.png


Luckily, the Artemis II moon lander will have people on board, including a pilot to help avoid such issues. With such a low high aspect ratio, a ridge or boulder could tip it over...

1709135155685.png

https://www.clickorlando.com/news/s...-moon-landing-may-be-pushed-back-report-says/
 
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  • #1,236
Artemis II will fly a free-return trajectory, no orbit and no landing. Artemis III is the planned landing, and Starship will fly autonomous - the crew will have some abort buttons and maybe some choice of the specific landing location but won't fly it manually.
difalcojr said:
How come they could land on the moon almost 55 years ago but not now?! And not since then?! :smile:
The Apollo program spent $180 billion to make 6 Moon landings.
Intuitive Machines spent $0.1 billion for one landing.
 
  • #1,237
Launch of Crew-8 in 1.5 hours
Jeanette Epps was originally assigned to Starliner and was moved to Dragon to finally give her an actual flight. Out of the 4 people on board (3*US, 1*Russia), only one has been in space before.

 
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  • #1,238
Wow, that's impressive to watch live!! Thanks. Packed in like sardines, huge acceleration, speed. Precision in space. Wonder how much g-force they felt? Or how fast their hearts were beating? Fantastic!
 
  • #1,240

Finding and Digitizing the Apollo 11 Moon Landing on NBC (July 20, 1969 - Partial Broadcast, B/W)​

 
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  • #1,242
A bit like a slow shooting star, just more controlled and with 4 people sitting inside.




Starship is still no earlier than March 14, in less than 2 days.
 
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