IM-1 Odysseus lunar lander

[spiffx]

Many congratulations to the IM team - they've done an amazing job and deserve a huge amount of credit for what they've achieved.

And many congratulations to NASA for having the nerve and determination to implement CLPS - I really hope this kickstarts the lunar economy.

(Apologies if this is not the right forum / thread for this): my one takeaway from this mission is that the lunar comms network really needs to be properly built out, and sooner rather than later – it doesn’t matter how good your lander / mission is, if you don’t have a decent comms network to get your data back, it feels like you’re potentially wasting a lot of time / effort struggling to resolve comms issues (that's not to diminish the extraordinary efforts of both IM and the groundstations across the world etc to get the comms working on this mission - what they achieved was amazing I think). Does this forum have a sense of the plans to get the lunar comms network upgraded to better support all these forthcoming lunar missions?

I note that in the first NASA news conference on 23rd Feb ‘24, Steve Altemus from IM seemed very, very keen to get the IM network upgraded, and the IM website talks about the IM Lunar Data Network, including their forthcoming KHON Data Relay satellites that are currently in production. But is there any NASA initiative to upgrade the lunar comms network? It seems like something NASA would be well placed to drive?

update: I eventually found this NASA page about the LunaNet architecture (part of the SCaN program at NASA), which seems to fit the bill for improving future lunar comms:

https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/lunanet-empowering-artemis-with-communications-and-navigation-interoperability/

if anyone knows of any details for the implementation of LunaNet, I'd be fascinated to hear more!

[Svetoslav]

https://www.intuitivemachines.com/im-1


​Lunar Surface Day Seven Update
Still kicking.   

Odysseus continues to operate on the lunar surface. At approximately 11:00 am CST, flight controllers intend to downlink additional data, and command Odie into a configuration that he may phone home if and when he wakes up when the sun rises again.

[mn]

Next time you'll get a plane you will understand why this landing was a failure. Anyway, we have a failed landing followed

You are not really comparing a flight on a commercial regularly scheduled flight to a first time landing on the moon by this company with this vehicle? (Yes some of the issues were mistakes, etc. but you can't use the same rules to qualify two vastly different things) (as already written by others earlier), what's considered a failure for your flight does not mean a failure here.

I wonder how they fixed an "hardware problem in SCALPSS serial port" without going up there with a screwdriver: these guys appear really confused about terminology: hardware, software, success, failure,... everything is a mess.

Software solutions to hardware problems are routine, they may have reconfigured software to find a different communication path, perhaps a bad connection meant they have to switch to a lower baud rate to get valid data? I have no idea what was the problem and how they fixed it, and it is possible that it was a software and not hardware problem, but I don't see a 'mess', at most a wrong term used. (and considering this is from the guys who built it, I suspect they know why they called it a hardware problem)

About confusion: they look really confused also about how to read telemetries: is it that complex to read onboard accelerometers and figure out final resting attitude? 0 degrees, no, 90 degrees, no maybe 30 degrees...
Very embarassing engineering, here.

They did explain this quite clearly, a valid mistake in the rush after landing and trying to get signal.

[mn]

When they realized the laser rangefinder was not working and they needed to find a solution, why did they push the landing by only one orbit, couldn't they have pushed it off several orbits to give themselves more time? what was the constraint? (Perhaps they were that low on propellant that another orbit would mean not enough propellant to land, but I highly doubt this, I hope there's a better explanation I missed somewhere)

[Comga]

When they realized the laser rangefinder was not working and they needed to find a solution, why did they push the landing by only one orbit, couldn't they have pushed it off several orbits to give themselves more time? what was the constraint? (Perhaps they were that low on propellant that another orbit would mean not enough propellant to land, but I highly doubt this, I hope there's a better explanation I missed somewhere)

Every orbit around the moon moves the ground track about 5.4 km to the west of the target, and Odysseus has some limit on its ability to compensate.

[  1737 km Moon radius * cos(80 deg S latitude)*2*Pi* (2 hr orbit/(24 hr/day * 29.5 day/month)))=5.4 km. ]

edit: propellants boiling is probably a much looser constraint.  Another orbit is only 2 hrs out of around 150 hours elapsed time since fueling and launch.

[StraumliBlight]

When they realized the laser rangefinder was not working and they needed to find a solution, why did they push the landing by only one orbit, couldn't they have pushed it off several orbits to give themselves more time? what was the constraint? (Perhaps they were that low on propellant that another orbit would mean not enough propellant to land, but I highly doubt this, I hope there's a better explanation I missed somewhere)

Fuel was a constraint.

These cryogenic fuels are more efficient and less toxic than storable hypergolic propellants.  However, due to their respective boiling points of -297 and -259 degrees Fahrenheit (-183 and -162 degrees Celsius), they slowly boil off into space. Therefore, IM-1 will land quickly in order to minimize the loss of propellant.

[Phil Stooke]

Have India released any Chandrayaan-2 images of the landing site yet? I think it is supposed to have higher resolution camera then LRO.

They have not yet released a post-landing image of SLIM.  They are not fast with these things.  Even a next lunar day image of Chandrayaan 3 which would show the rover location has not been released.

[Comga]

Some rough presser notes:
(snip)

Thank you for taking all these notes.
(They are closer to comprehensive than "rough".)
Even having watched the entire press conference, these are informative.
Makes me think about establishing another login to give it another "like" (but I will refrain)

[mn]

When they realized the laser rangefinder was not working and they needed to find a solution, why did they push the landing by only one orbit, couldn't they have pushed it off several orbits to give themselves more time? what was the constraint? (Perhaps they were that low on propellant that another orbit would mean not enough propellant to land, but I highly doubt this, I hope there's a better explanation I missed somewhere)

Fuel was a constraint.

These cryogenic fuels are more efficient and less toxic than storable hypergolic propellants.  However, due to their respective boiling points of -297 and -259 degrees Fahrenheit (-183 and -162 degrees Celsius), they slowly boil off into space. Therefore, IM-1 will land quickly in order to minimize the loss of propellant.

Yes I know fuel was a constraint in the big picture, but as I said, I doubted the constraint was down to a few hours of a few small orbits.

[matthewkantar]

When they realized the laser rangefinder was not working and they needed to find a solution, why did they push the landing by only one orbit, couldn't they have pushed it off several orbits to give themselves more time? what was the constraint? (Perhaps they were that low on propellant that another orbit would mean not enough propellant to land, but I highly doubt this, I hope there's a better explanation I missed somewhere)

Fuel was a constraint.

These cryogenic fuels are more efficient and less toxic than storable hypergolic propellants.  However, due to their respective boiling points of -297 and -259 degrees Fahrenheit (-183 and -162 degrees Celsius), they slowly boil off into space. Therefore, IM-1 will land quickly in order to minimize the loss of propellant.

Yes I know fuel was a constraint in the big picture, but as I said, I doubted the constraint was down to a few hours of a few small orbits.

Maybe rate of boil off is nonlinear? The rush to get the lander down and the report of zero residuals suggests they were up against it.

[Bob Shaw]

IIRC the propellant tanks were designed to have no boiloff but were instead high pressure COPVs which used internal pressure to keep the fluids liquid. I may have picked that up incorrectly!

[ChrisC]

Add me to the chorus of people who are grateful to TheInternetFTW for his thorough transcript of the press conference.  It was great to see a wall-of-text post in this thread that was all signal and no noise   Speaking of which:

were *not* transmitting through high gain antenna, using an omni antenna "about the size of a water bottle"
  - could only pull down that data when going from horizon to horizon at Parkes.
  - very affected by wind - if there's wind when moving a 64m dish, it has to stop moving.

It's a minor point, but one I can comment on.  Any larger antenna like The Dish at Parkes needs a motorized tracking system to stay on targets -- the motors aren't just for moving between targets, they are for staying on targets.  Remember that the Earth is always rotating under the sky, so you have to keep moving to stay on target.  And this requirement gets more and more critical for bigger and bigger antennas.  For a monster like the Parkes 64-meter, the main lobe boresight (the central focus, basically) is only 0.10-0.20 degrees wide, depending on the frequency of use (and I'm assuming S-band's 2.4 GHz).  The moon is 0.50 degrees wide, so they don't have to just aim it at the moon, they have to aim it at the right part of the moon -- in this case, the South Pole of course.  And then track it, and that tracking needs to account not just for Earth rotation but also the Moon's orbital motion around Earth -- 0.5 degree per hour.

So those antenna motors are basically running constantly, clocking that dish slowly across the sky to follow that target.  When the brakes are off and the motors are running, the structure is less rigid and less able to withstand wind loads.  If the wind speeds go up, at some point you have to stop moving, lock the brakes, and wait.  (And if you have a serious wind event coming, you go to "storm stow" position, which for most dishes is pointing straight up.)

[nzguy]

It's a minor point, but one I can comment on.  Any larger antenna like The Dish at Parkes needs a motorized tracking system to stay on targets -- the motors aren't just for moving between targets, they are for staying on targets.  Remember that the Earth is always rotating under the sky, so you have to keep moving to stay on target.  And this requirement gets more and more critical for bigger and bigger antennas.  For a monster like the Parkes 64-meter, the main lobe boresight (the central focus, basically) is only 0.10-0.20 degrees wide, depending on the frequency of use (and I'm assuming S-band's 2.4 GHz).  The moon is 0.50 degrees wide, so they don't have to just aim it at the moon, they have to aim it at the right part of the moon -- in this case, the South Pole of course.  And then track it, and that tracking needs to account not just for Earth rotation but also the Moon's orbital motion around Earth -- 0.5 degree per hour.

So those antenna motors are basically running constantly, clocking that dish slowly across the sky to follow that target.  When the brakes are off and the motors are running, the structure is less rigid and less able to withstand wind loads.  If the wind speeds go up, at some point you have to stop moving, lock the brakes, and wait.  (And if you have a serious wind event coming, you go to "storm stow" position, which for most dishes is pointing straight up.)

Very interesting! I wonder if that is why JPL DSN is looking at building more small dishes and running them as a array to get good reception of weak signals vs the very large dishes that are due to be retired.

[whitelancer64]

It's a minor point, but one I can comment on.  Any larger antenna like The Dish at Parkes needs a motorized tracking system to stay on targets -- the motors aren't just for moving between targets, they are for staying on targets.  Remember that the Earth is always rotating under the sky, so you have to keep moving to stay on target.  And this requirement gets more and more critical for bigger and bigger antennas.  For a monster like the Parkes 64-meter, the main lobe boresight (the central focus, basically) is only 0.10-0.20 degrees wide, depending on the frequency of use (and I'm assuming S-band's 2.4 GHz).  The moon is 0.50 degrees wide, so they don't have to just aim it at the moon, they have to aim it at the right part of the moon -- in this case, the South Pole of course.  And then track it, and that tracking needs to account not just for Earth rotation but also the Moon's orbital motion around Earth -- 0.5 degree per hour.

So those antenna motors are basically running constantly, clocking that dish slowly across the sky to follow that target.  When the brakes are off and the motors are running, the structure is less rigid and less able to withstand wind loads.  If the wind speeds go up, at some point you have to stop moving, lock the brakes, and wait.  (And if you have a serious wind event coming, you go to "storm stow" position, which for most dishes is pointing straight up.)

Very interesting! I wonder if that is why JPL DSN is looking at building more small dishes and running them as a array to get good reception of weak signals vs the very large dishes that are due to be retired.

IIRC (there was a discussion about this in one of the DSN threads) it's mainly because it's significantly cheaper to build smaller dishes and NASA's plan to upgrade the DSN is way overbudget. So they are focusing on the smaller dishes first.

Large dishes are still needed to send commands and receive data from very distant missions like outer planets / solar system.

[yg1968]

When they realized the laser rangefinder was not working and they needed to find a solution, why did they push the landing by only one orbit, couldn't they have pushed it off several orbits to give themselves more time? what was the constraint? (Perhaps they were that low on propellant that another orbit would mean not enough propellant to land, but I highly doubt this, I hope there's a better explanation I missed somewhere)

On CNN, Bill Nelson said that they could have done only one more orbit and still land. He didn't say why. 

[Brian45]

Any info on when IM will try again with IM-2?

[Phil Stooke]

Not yet, I think, but there had been talk of it happening within a few (3 or 4) months.  That seems unlikely as there will be some serious reworking of both hardware and software.  Late in the year might be possible with Vertex being pushed into next year.

[Blackstar]

IIRC (there was a discussion about this in one of the DSN threads) it's mainly because it's significantly cheaper to build smaller dishes and NASA's plan to upgrade the DSN is way overbudget. So they are focusing on the smaller dishes first.

I believe (willing to be corrected) that one of the key issues is that the smaller dishes are commercially available, whereas a larger dish would have to be custom-built. In addition, I would not say that the plan for upgrading DSN is "overbudget"--the agency has never adequately funded their requirements because infrastructure always gets neglected.

[Blackstar]

https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1763336637432385813

[catdlr]

https://twitter.com/SpaceByStorm/status/1763337932759609847