The spacecraft came down on its side, but is still operating well
In the first US venture to the lunar surface since the Apollo 17 landing in 1972, the Odysseus lunar lander touched down on the Moon at 23:23 UTC on 22 February. The lander appears to have tipped over during the landing, but is operating well regardless.
Odysseus was built and is operated by US private spaceflight company Intuitive Machines as part of the IM-1 lunar mission, making this the first-ever soft landing on the Moon by a private spacecraft. The mission launched from the Kennedy Space Center at 06:05 UTC on 15 February, on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with a target landing site of crater Malapert A, located around 300km from the lunar south pole.
Unfortunately, the landing was far from straightforward. Problems with the primary navigation equipment forced Odysseus to switch to using a NASA Lidar experiment that was initially just intended as a technology demonstration. Then, after the craft touched down, mission control conducted several hours of troubleshooting before successfully establishing communications using the back-up, much slower, low-gain antenna.
“I know this was a nail-biter, but we are on the surface and transmitting,” said Stephen Altemus, president of Intuitive Machines. “Welcome to the Moon.”
A few days later, Intuitive Machines announced the spacecraft had tipped on its side due to a broken leg strut. Fortunately, the so
