by Cape Canaveral, Florida (AP) – A moonland that was privately owned on Thursday in the moon, which landed on the moon, could not confirm his condition or whether it was even upright near the south pole.
The last time that intuitive machines landed a spaceship on the moon a year ago, it ended on the side.
As planned, the latest Athena Lander brought the company out of the lunar orbit and wore an ice drill, a drone and two rovers for NASA and others. The one -hour descent seemed to be going well, but it took a while for Mission Control Touchdown to confirm.
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“We are on the surface,” reported mission director and co -founder Tim Crain. A few minutes later he repeated: “It looks like we are below … We are working to evaluate exactly what our orientation is on the surface.”
Athena was introduced last week and communicated with controllers more than 230,000 miles (375,000 kilometers) and produced solar energy, said officials. But almost half an hour after the touchdown, Crain and his team were still unable to confirm whether everything was fine with the 4.7-meter country (4.7 meters). NASA and intuitive machines abruptly ended their live webcast and later promised further updates at a press conference.
“Ok team, continue working the problem,” Crain urged.
Intuitive machines put the United States back on the moon last year, even though its landlades tipped on the side. Last weekend it was accompanied by another Lander of another Texan company.
Firefly Aerospace on Sunday was the first to achieve full success with his Blue Ghost Lunar Lander on the northeastern edge of the moon. A vacuum has already collected moon dirt for the analysis, and a dust sign has shaken off the abrasive particles that cling to everything.
This time, intuitive machines were aimed at a mountain sample, just 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the south pole, much closer than before.
The back-to-back moon landings of this week are part of the commercial moon delivery program of NASA, which should bring the experiments of the space agency into the gray, dusty surface and the start of the start. The commercial landers are also regarded as scouts for the astronauts, which will later follow this decade as part of the Artemis program of NASA, the successor to Apollo.
Before landing, the NASA officials said that they knew that some of the inexpensive missions would fail. But with more private missions to the moon, this increased the number of experiments that had reached there.
The NASA spent tens of million dollars on the ice drill and two other instruments on Athena and paid an additional $ 62 million for the elevator. Most experiments came from private companies, including the two rovers. The rocket-powered drone came from intuitive machine-sie in a permanently shaded crater near the landing site in search of frozen water.
Before the flight, Trent Martin von Intuitive Machines said that Athena had to land upright so that the drone and rovers had to be used.
In order to reduce the costs even more, intuitive machines shared their SpaceX rocket start with three spaceships that took their separate paths. Two of them-the Lunar Trailblazer from NASA and Astroforges Assoid-Junger Odin-Sind in danger.
NASA said this week that the Lunar Trail Blazer turns without radio contact and does not reach the intended orbit around the moon for scientific observations. Odin is also silent, unlikely with his planned asteroid flyby.
With regard to Athene, intuitive machines carried out dozens of repairs and upgrades after the company’s side touchdown. It was still possible to operate briefly and end the drought in the moon landing of America for more than 50 years.
Until then, the United States had not landed on the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. Nobody else sent astronauts to the moon, the overarching goal of the Artemis program of NASA. And only four other countries have successfully landed robot spaceships on the moon: Russia, China, India and Japan.
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