A day after landing on the moon, the robot Ethana spacecraft manufactured by Houston’s spontaneous machines is dead.
In Update on your website on FridayThe company confirmed that Athena had given up on its behalf – the same fate that manages its first lunar lander, Odisius last year. Unable to withstand the sun with her solar panels, the battery of the spacecraft could not recharge.
The company said it did not expect to revive the spacecraft.
Before the spacecraft became silent, “the mission controller was able to accelerate several programs and payload milestones,” said the spontaneous machines. It did not provide details about what it had completed.
Till Friday afternoon, NASA has not yet publicly commented on the conclusion before the time of the mission, which lived for 10 days until the moon did not fall on that part of the moon night.
This mission was part of a program of NASA, which is known as commercial lunar payload services, or CLP to contrast private companies to carry science equipment and technology performances at low cost. Another robot spacecraft that is part of CLPS, the blue ghost lander by the Zugnu Aerospace of Cedar Park, Texas, was touched on Sunday and conducting science experiments on another part of the moon.
Athena landed on a flat-top mountain called Mons Monson, about 100 miles from the south pole of the moon on Thursday. It was the most southern landing site of any spacecraft.
The company said that the spacecraft ended about 150 miles from the target landing site.
Ethena was carrying payload for NASA and commercial customers, including three rovers, a rocket-managed drone, and a drill to attack the lunar soil in search of water ice.
Immediately after landing, it became clear that the spacecraft was not working as expected.
At a post-glanding news conference, Steve Altemus, the Chief Executive Officer of Inteuative Machines, depicted the tribulations in positive lights. “At any time when you ship a spacecraft for Florida for flight and are working on the moon after a week, I declare a success,” he said.
Investors do not agree. The shares of a publicly trading company, interested machines fell 20 percent on Thursday and the start of trading continued on Friday. On Friday afternoon, the company’s stock was trading under $ 9, which was more than $ 13, when the stock market was opened on Thursday.
NASA’s Science Mission Directorate Associate Administrator Nikola Fox also tried to put a positive spin on the discouraged results. “Our goal is to install American companies to install a lunar economy on the surface,” he said. “And this means that if it does not descend completely, we always learn lessons we can provide and use in the future.”
But Athena’s quick death again raises questions about the sound of NASA’s strategy.
So far, four CLP missions have been launched. The landing of the Blue Ghost Spacecraft on Sunday only on Sunday seems to be a complete success by Jugnu. The two landers sent by intuitive machines landed both in a position to work, but failed to meet most of their science goals.
The fourth CLPS mission by Pittsburgh’s astrobotic technology, missed the moon completely last year, when the propulsion system of its Peregreen spacecraft failed immediately after the launch.
“You really hopes that there are at least two companies that are successful,” Thomas Zarbuchain said, who Dr. Prior to Fox established the CLP as the head of the Science Mission Directorate and in 2017. “I hope it’s more.”
But Dr. Zarbuchain has said from the beginning that perhaps half the missions would fail because companies came to know how to take smart risks in the construction of a cheaper spacecraft.
Almost innocent success of Blue Ghost shows that lunar missions with cheap value tags are possible. NASA paid $ 101 million to Jugnu to give science experiments worth $ 44 million.
For Athena, NASA agreed to pay Mons Mutton to pay $ 62.5 million to the comfortable machines for delivery service. The difference of trade relations between Athena’s payload suggests that the goal of spreading a profitable lunar economy is not completely imaginary.
For example, Nokia won a NASA contract to deploy the 4G LTE cellphone network on the moon. Nokia then hired a company, Lunar outpost of Golden, Kolo.
Lunar outpost again sold the place to other commercial customers on his rover.
In a statement, Nokia stated that its system was successfully turned on after landing, and operated for about 25 minutes.
The statement said, “Unfortunately, Nokia was unable to make the first cellular call on the moon due to factors beyond our control, resulting in our user device to the device module,” said in the statement.
If CLPS delivery fails, commercial companies and NASA may change the layer to send more packages.
One of the major equipment of NASA made by Athena was a drill manufactured by Honeybee Robotics, a subsidiary of Blue Origin.
A few decades ago, interest in the moon was re -awakened after discovery of frozen water in shaded craters near the stick. By analyzing the soil and rock three feet below the surface, NASA hoped how much water really is and how easily it can be dug and it can be used by future astronauts.
But now NASA has to decide whether to spend more dollars more for another drill to collect that information.
NASA is already the owner of a uniform drill that is installed on the polar exploration rover, or vaporous examining the wiper. The golf-Cart-shaped rover was also slate to land on Mons Monson on the Next CLPS mission of Astrobotic. But the space agency announced last year that it wanted to cancel the wiper, even though it had already spent $ 450 million and the creation and testing of the rover was almost complete.
The space agency has since called the companies to send Rover to NASA on the moon without any extra cost.
Daniel Kaye Contribution reporting.
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