Ethana lander of machines with intuitive knowledge is on the moon, but its fate is unclear

Athena did not crashed. But what happened to it?

Hours after the arrival of a 15-foot tall robotic spacecraft on the lunar surface, it is not clear that its touchdown was sufficiently smooth to do its intended work, or if it ended in the process, probably limited the scientific achievements of the mission.

“We are trying to evaluate what happened in that last bit,” Tim Crane said at a news conference.

The spacecraft is almost the same for Odicius, the lander that sent the company to the moon last year. The Odisius was the first commercially operated vehicle to successfully landed on the moon. But this success came up with a starving when the vehicle topped the ground immediately after reaching the ground.

It seems that it may have happened again.

At a post-glanding news conference, CEO of Inteuative Machies Steve Altemus said that the spacecraft had sent back the conflicting data about whether it was standing or stuck upright. But a sensor, known as an inertial measurement unit, probably offered a solid clue that Athena was on his side.

As it leads to the lunar surface, laser equipment measuring the height of the lander was providing noise data, which may have contributed to the bottled landing.

Until that last dynasty, Ethena performed much smoothly compared to the Odicius lander a year ago, Dr. The Crane of Inteautive Machines said. “We were expecting a completely successful landing,” he said.

Mr. Altemus said that it was soon to determine how much the planned mission could still be saved. The payload of Ethena includes a drill, three small rovers and a rocket-operated hoping drone.

“When we get that complete evaluation, we will then work closely with NASA science and technology groups, which are the top priority to identify the objectives of science,” said Mr. Altemus. “And then we will find out what the mission profile will look like.”

The spacecraft is not creating as much power as it should be, perhaps because the solar panels have not been indicated in the right direction.

Images from cameras on the spacecraft will help detect the orientation of the spacecraft. Dr. The crane stated that the spacecraft was possibly set out of the planned landing zone, but believed that it was still somewhere on Mons Mutton, a high plateau near the South Poll that was to detect Atna.

NASA’s lunar reconnaissance images from the orbiter, which will be passed on the landing site, may indicate the exact location of Athana.

It has been a busy week on the spaceflight and the moon. This week was the second company that reached the lunar surface, after the firefly aerospace, another Texas Space Company, on Sunday morning, successfully reached the Mare Crysium region of the Moon.

“At any time humanity puts a lander on the moon, this is a good day,” Dr. Crane said.

The main customer of both missions NASA is under its commercial lunar payload service program, hiring private companies to take NASA-funded science and technology payload to the lunar surface. NASA’s contract for this mission is up to $ 62.5 million, but smooth machines cannot be paid the entire amount.

Shares of intuitive machines, which traded under the Lunr name after public in 2023, became tumbls after reports of spacecraft problems. Its stock fell 20 percent on Thursday.

The main payload on the ethena is a drill for NASA that will remove lunar soil to smell by a mass spectrometer for frozen water and other compounds. NASA officials said that it may be possible to work for a drill, even if the spacecraft is not vertical. “It’s not directly that I can drill directly where I can drill directly where I can drill directly where I can drill directly,” said Cleeton Turner, the Associate Administrator of NASA’s Space Technology Mission. “There are other options we can use.”

In addition, a small dog size is a rover that will test a Nokia cellphone network on the moon, and two small rovers, one by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the other by a Japanese company. Machines with intuitive knowledge planned to test a rocket-powered vehicle, called a hopper that can detect places that do not reach easily by Rovers.

A parade of Chandra Landers is expected to continue during the remaining year.

One of those spacecraft is already in space. Lander, a flexibility from Ispace in Japan, was launched on the same SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket which sent the blue ghost of Jugnu in its way. But it is taking a long, more fuel-skilled path to the moon. It will enter the orbit around the moon around 6 May and try to land in the northern hemisphere of the moon, or in the sea, in the ocean of the sea.

In the fall, Pittsburgh’s astrobotic technology is trying to go to a large lander that is known as Griffin, which will take a commercial rover designed by the lunar outpost of the colo, the golden among other cargo.

The most complicated lander is planned by Blue Origin, a rocket company launched by Jeff Bezos. Known as Blue Moon Mark 1, a lander will be the largest spacecraft to install on the moon, even more than 50 years ago during Apollo Moon Landing, NASA’s astronauts were larger than people carrying the moon on the moon.

Daniel Kaye Contribution reporting.