Yesterday, it responded after a roughly two-week lunar night — something that was possible, but not expected. Japan’s space agency cut off contact to protect it from mid-day lunar temperatures but did get pictures.
Japan’s SLIM lander already regained power once after landing upside-down on the Moon last month. Guess it takes more than a lunar night to get rid of the MOON SNIPER!
During a NASA press conference Friday evening, Intuitive Machines co-founder and CEO Steve Altemus showed the attitude of its lunar lander, the first from the US to reach the Moon’s surface in over 50 years.
As Swapna Krishna explains, they believe it tipped over after catching a foot on the surface while landing, but fortunately, it’s still getting sunlight to power the battery. Plans for the coming days include deploying a CubeSat it’s carrying called EagleCam to take photos from the surface.
After a stressful few minutes of waiting beyond the estimated 6:24PM ET touchdown, the mission director said, “...we can confirm, without a doubt, our equipment is on the surface of the Moon, and we are transmitting.”
The flight on April 8th has been adjusted for the next total solar eclipse to spend as much time as possible within the path of totality — the duration in which the Moon completely blocks out the sun.
Delta flight 1218 will be specifically operated on an A220-300, which will offer especially premium viewing due to the aircraft’s extra-large windows. The flight will depart from Austin at 12:15 p.m. CT and land in Detroit at 4:20 p.m. ET — timed to give those on board the best chance of safely viewing the solar eclipse at its peak.
Roundtrip tickets are currently priced at $1,357 in the main cabin, which is more than double the usual fare. Still, that might be worth it since according to NASA it’ll be the last total eclipse visible from North America until 2044.
Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lunar lander snapped a few selfies with ol’ Mother Earth yesterday while on its way to the Moon.
There are a few more high-res pictures over at Intuitive Machines’ website. If Odysseus succeeds in its mission, it will be the first successful US-launched Moon landing in over 50 years.
NASA engineers told Space that “effectively, the call between the spacecraft and the Earth was still connected” after its transmissions stopped making sense last year, “but Voyager’s ‘voice’ was replaced with a monotonous dial tone.”
The scientists are reportedly holding out hope they can fix it, but if they aren’t able to, that would leave Voyager 2 as humanity’s only still-communicating spacecraft in interstellar space.
After the sample was returned last year and NASA scientists went through some tribulation to break into the canister containing it, they say they gathered 121.6 grams of asteroid bits from Bennu.
NASA had hoped to gather at least 60 grams of material from the asteroid when its OSIRIS-REx mission craft punched its surface in 2020.
Attention President Skroob, Moon Phases — an art project from the maker of shiny balloon animals, comprised of 125 miniature Moon sculptures within a transparent cube — is headed to the Moon as a payload aboard Intuitive Machines Nova-C “Odysseus” lander, which was launched by SpaceX this morning.
The lunar surface will become the new home immortalizing Koons’ piece if Odysseus successfully lands on February 22nd.
[T]he Starlink team identified a common issue in this small population of satellites that could increase the probability of failure in the future. The satellites will follow a safe, circular, and controlled lowering operation that should take approximately six months for most of the vehicles.
It’s a small fraction of the 5,828 Starlink sats in orbit, and SpaceX says it’s deorbited 406 sats previously. Unusual to decommission so many at once, though.
