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IM-1 seems for quite some weeks fixed for 15th November:
https://spaceflightnow.com/launch-schedule/
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That's my birthday :D
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"https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/10/ars-takes-a-close-up-look-at-the-first-us-lunar-lander-in-half-a-century/"
Quote:
"Intuitive Machines has a tentative launch date of November 16, when a six-day window opens for its spacecraft to reach the Moon. However, there are concerns about whether a Falcon 9 rocket will be available at that time. The mission will lift off from SpaceX's Launch Complex 39A pad, and there are a handful of missions ahead of it, including the Psyche asteroid mission, a cargo supply mission for NASA, and potentially the USSF-52 mission.
"We're in line with a whole bunch of others," Altemus said. "Our strategy is being there and being ready to go."
The company has another six-day window that opens in December, and an additional one in early January. It will take five to seven days to reach the Moon, and then after arriving there, the spacecraft will spend a day lining up with the plane at the landing site at 80 degrees south, near the pole, before making a landing attempt."
Also there is already a thread for this mission in the SpaceX mission section, so this thread should really be locked or deleted.
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The section in question is called: "SpaceX Falcon Missions Section"
It's intended to be about the launch vehicle but it actually absorbs everything about the mission until launch.
OK, this could become the appropriate thread after launch. But since the first post was about the launch date, really it belonged in the launch vehicle mission section.
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It's perfectly fine to have threads for both the mission and for the launch. Most payloads that get launched don't really need a separate mission thread on our site. If someone wants to have a thread here for IM-1 it's not a problem.
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I did not know that there is a detailed IM-1 coverage on Spacex Missions section ... Now I know.
So I don't insist at all on having this thread ...
My dream is to have a one stop shop for lunar polar missions, but currently I have to chase the threads ...
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There should definitely be a thread here. The thread in the Falcon 9 missions section is good, but that is an odd place to have it. It will make even less sense after launch.
If the landing is successful, there should be some pictures and a little science data to talk about. If it fails then I would expect a discussion of why it failed and the programmatic consequences.
NASA has invested a fair bit of money in the CLPS program and nothing has been delivered so far. Some people think that the commercial model will save money for science in the future. However, people have become used to old NASA's near flawless execution over the past few years, so seeing failures will come as something of a surprise. Given the pressure on the science budget, I don't think there will be much tolerance of failures.
A successful landing would be a big win for the commercial approach. A failure on landing won't be too bad, as long as there is enough telemetry to figure out what went wrong. The political/media reaction to that would be worth watching. A failure before getting to the moon would be a serious blow.
IM-2 thread in Falcon 9 missions section:
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=49177.0
CLPS thread in commercial section:
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=45580.0
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CLPS is commerical in that NASA calls it commerical (are we still pretending that viper is CLPS and not just cost plus?). Its still alot of nasa money going into the missions. The entire american public and congress will think of them as "NASA" missions. Yes, if you get into the nitty gritty, NASA has offloaded alot of risk and some of the cost onto the companies involved.
However, that will go over the heads of 99% of the country (who mostly think the falcon 9 is a nasa rocket).
If a CLPS mission crashes, I can garuntee you that the headlines won't say "space startup mission falls short", they will have words like "NASA" and "crashes" and "fails" in the headline. The fine print of how the mission was categoriezed will be 10 paragraphs down and missed by most people.
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I don't think we disagree. I'm not a fan of CLPS. Using small, inexperienced, resource constrained companies increases the risks of failure. They will be seen as NASA missions so failures will do some reputational damage to NASA, and science payloads that NASA funded will be lost. NASA is insulated against cost overruns, unless they bankrupt the contractor, in which case NASA loses the whole mission. That happened with Masten.
The lander on this mission, NOVA-C, is methalox. So not only do they have to land on the moon, they also have to manage boil-off issues. Somebody may correct me on this, but I think it will be the longest duration flight of any cryogenic rocket stage. I also think it is the second methalox rocket to operate in space after the Chinese Zhuque-2. If it works, it will be an impressive technology demonstration. Is it a good way to do science? We'll see.
I don't see a commercial market for these landers. I think they will be dependent on NASA funding for a long time. If the landers perform well, then maybe the companies can win other NASA and Pentagon contracts.
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Great that they use liquid methane. That means launch to landing time will be short.
Although the press will claim that NASA lander failed, still for people inside NASA the Apollo legacy will be untouched. I think CLPS is a really good move.
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So, if the CLSP contracts are like Commercial Cargo and Crew contracts, then part of the risk that is assumed by the contractor is success prior to payment. Unlike a traditional NASA contract where the contractor gets paid regardless of the outcome, these companies are being paid to provide a service. If they don't make it to the moon or if they crash on landing, they don't get paid for completing that portion of the service. In addition, the contracts would not completely fund the development of the vehicle. The companies put in a certain percentage of the cost for R&D and development.
So, yes, the political and PR risks are still there; however, it does put a greater amount of the financial risk of mission failure on the contractor.
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And to get it back on topic, hopefully they are able to work out which Falcon 9 will launch this mission very soon. I am excited to see it go!
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NASA has offloaded alot of risk and some of the cost onto the companies involved.
I'm going to argue with that statement, or at least question it. What does "offloaded a lot of risk... onto the companies involved" mean? There are different kinds of risk, but right now, at the most basic level, these are mostly NASA-funded missions serving NASA requirements. Therefore, if they fail, NASA loses. It loses money, and it loses that capability to land whatever it wanted to land. So the risk is still NASA's risk.
Now we can also say that if a mission fails, the company that built it could possibly go out of business, or at least suffer loss of stock value, reputation, money. So the company also has risk. But I think that is more the function of the size of these companies than NASA offloading risk onto them. Take an alternative situation where NASA contracted Lockheed Martin to build a lander and it fails. LM is so big that the company is not going to take much of a hit.
Your right, I wasn't very clear. However you hit the major points. Sorry
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I don't think we disagree. I'm not a fan of CLPS. Using small, inexperienced, resource constrained companies increases the risks of failure... NASA is insulated against cost overruns, unless they bankrupt the contractor, in which case NASA loses the whole mission. That happened with Masten.
This is a naive opinion. The reality is that big companies are just as prone as small companies to technical failures with huge cost and schedule implications — see repeated Boeing Starliner flight and test problems. And the reality is that big companies are just as prone to terminating agreements and pulling out of projects — see Boeing pulling out of XS-1 at DARPA when they became resource-constrained in the wake of 737 MAX costs. (Not picking on Boeing — these examples just came to mind.) No organization is promised mission success because of its size. Success comes down to the quality of mission formulation, the vigilance of mission management during development, and a certain degree of luck. These things will be good or bad regardless of company size. Good procurements literally ask for and compare the resumes of team leadership. Bad procurements rely on lazy impressions of organizational experience.
I started the COTS program on which this lunar lander effort is partly modeled and served as its first program exec. We had one failure (RpK terminated because of fundraising issues), one middling success (OSC, now NG, Cygnus/Antares), and one spectacular success (SpaceX Dragon/F9). There was no big versus small pattern of success/failure. That program provided NASA’s first successful launch and space transportation developments in decades and now serves as the model, more or less, for all new human space flight development programs since. The underlying key to that program’s success was being humble enough to understand that we don’t know enough to pick the single best performer for any particular procurement. Rather, we need to place several bets. This lunar lander program is following the same strategy and will see similar a spread of results.
They will be seen as NASA missions so failures will do some reputational damage to NASA
These lunar lander missions are the planetary science equivalent of the Explorer missions from the astronomy and heliophysics side of the house. The Explorer Program had two spacecraft failures in 1999. I doubt anyone can bring up their names from memory or find a press article on those failures. What is remembered are bigger missions with more press going in and more expensive failures coming out. Examples like MCO/MPL or HST optics. And even those failures arguably had no long-term implications for the “reputation” of their parent programs or NASA science (or NASA) in general. And then there are the human space flight failures with loss of life that do loom large in NASA history. So there’s failures, Failures, and FAILURES. They’re not all the same, and we shouldn’t paint them all with the same brush. NASA, including planetary science, needs pockets of experimentation where new concepts can be tried, risks taken, and failures accepted and learned from.
and science payloads that NASA funded will be lost.
Like the lower-ends of the Explorer Program for astrophysics and heliophysics, for the most part, these are planetary science payloads that would never have flown (and planetary science researchers that never would have been flight-trained) without this program. Either you take some risks at the low-end to get more instruments flown, more data back, and more researchers flight experience. Or you forgo these kinds of riskier, lower-end programs and either take new instrument and new PI risks on more expensive programs like Discovery and New Frontiers or just accept a smaller pipeline of new instruments and PIs.
The lander on this mission, NOVA-C, is methalox. So not only do they have to land on the moon, they also have to manage boil-off issues. Somebody may correct me on this, but I think it will be the longest duration flight of any cryogenic rocket stage.
NASA stored LCH4 on orbit with zero boiloff for four months on CRS-16. See Robotic Refueling Mission 3. LCH4 with boiloff for days is comparatively straightforward.
Centaurs have demonstrated LOX (and LH2) storage and firings after ~10 hours with about 2% loss. There are several types of diesel submarine that rely on multi-week storage of liquid oxygen for underwater operation and propulsion. One can buy LOX dewars online. The devil is always in the details, but multi-day storage of LOX is hardly witchcraft.
Again, NASA needs programs like this where it can prove out new technologies and subsystems and have some failures along the way. A new propulsion system like this could not be tried on a critical-path Mars lander mission, but it can be tried in this place-some-bets lunar lander program.
I don't see a commercial market for these landers. I think they will be dependent on NASA funding for a long time. If the landers perform well, then maybe the companies can win other NASA and Pentagon contracts.
There’s no doubt that these lunar lander missions would not exist without NASA. But these companies have non-NASA customers for these missions, and they are involved in other NASA and non-NASA work besides these lunar lander missions. Astrobotic’s Griffin 1 has 14 non-NASA payloads, and Masten terrestrial flight testing continues under Astrobotic. DSS works Orion avionics. Draper goes back to Apollo. Firefly has three SLV launches under their belt. Intuitive Machines has the same deep pocket backer as Axiom, IM-1 has six non-NASA payloads, and they do terrestrial drones. Tyvak does smallsats. Big firms like LockMart, SpaceX, Sierra Nevada, and Blue Origin have also qualified for awards under this program. Etc.
That is true. The way the contracts are written could limit NASA's risk if the company fails to deliver. But just about every contract, including a cost-plus contract, is also going to have performance-based awards. Look at it like this: suppose NASA signs a contract with Lockheed-Martin that is cost-plus, but it reaches orbit and then fails. Although NASA paid the money to build it (and any overruns that occurred), NASA will not pay any award fees they would have had to pay for successful operations. Not exactly potato/potahto when comparing it to a services-based contract, but not completely different either.
No, they’re very different.
Award fees on a cost-plus contract are a few or handful of percent of the total contract value, whatever that total value turns out to be. The government is on the hook to pay for 95-97% of the work done on a cost-plus contract, even if that work ends up costing 200% (or whatever overrun) of the original contract value. The government may be able to withhold 3-5% of the original contract value for poor performance, but costs will still double (or whatever) overall under cost-plus
Fixed-price contracts are milestone-driven, and unmet milestones on a fixed-price contract represent large chunks of the total contract. If the contractor fails to complete, say, 50% of the milestones (because of overruns, technical issues, etc.) on a fixed-price contract, then the government only loses ~50% of the original contract value and can reapply that funding to a different performer. There is no overrun, and unused budget can be reapplied.
The type of contract used is really a function of whether the government is willing to risk cost increases (cost-plus) or project loss (fixed-cost). The way to manage those contract risks programmatically is via multiple performers. If the government relies on only one performer, the government is held over a barrel on cost (cost-plus) or project (fixed-cost). But with multiple performers, the government can credibly threaten to terminate a contract of either type when there is a big overrun (cost-plus) or milestone failures (fixed-price) and still have a successful program overall. Multiple performers hold cost-plus performers’ feet to the fire on cost (in ways that award fees never have), and they provide a off-ramp for the program when fixed-price performers are failing.
(The type of contract is also a function of what performers can be attracted to do the work. No one will develop a megawatt fusion drive under fixed-price, to use an extreme example.)
That said, I've heard that NASA has been providing a lot of under the table support to these projects to reduce the risk of them failing. For instance, having experienced NASA personnel help the contractor's inexperienced personnel. So although a services-based contract is supposed to put more risk burden on the contractor, NASA may have recognized that letting the contractor fail is not a good option.
The reality here is that NASA provides a lot of support to contractors of all types and sizes on NASA missions because contractors can’t afford the carrying costs of all the domain expertise that NASA maintains. You’re not going to find, say, lunar terrain and regolith experts in most aerospace firms. NASA has to provide that expertise. LockMart couldn’t pull off Mars landers without specialized JPL expertise, and JPL has found out that it can’t do an MSR lander without LockMart’s (or some other firm’s) engineering experience and cost structure. It’s why every Explorer, Discovery, and New Frontiers proposal is a partnership between a government lab and an aerospace contractor, with a (usually university) PI riding herd on science prioritization and instrument teams.
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The reality here is that NASA provides a lot of support to contractors of all types and sizes on NASA missions because contractors can’t afford the carrying costs of all the domain expertise that NASA maintains. You’re not going to find, say, lunar terrain and regolith experts in most aerospace firms. NASA has to provide that expertise. LockMart couldn’t pull off Mars landers without specialized JPL expertise, and JPL has found out that it can’t do an MSR lander without LockMart’s (or some other firm’s) engineering experience and cost structure. It’s why every Explorer, Discovery, and New Frontiers proposal is a partnership between a government lab and an aerospace contractor, with a (usually university) PI riding herd on science prioritization and instrument teams.
You quoted multiple posts from different posters here, and trying to respond to that and figure out the quote bars makes my head hurt, so I'm not going to try. But this part above is missing my point--what I have heard (maybe it is not accurate?) is that NASA has provided this additional mission/engineering support after it became apparent that the companies lacked capabilities, and that the risk of failure was higher than originally expected or desired. That's a different thing than the standard practice of teaming up NASA civil servant expertise with contractors. That's not what they did with CLPS. And that was the context of my original post about risk--CLPS was set up to accept more risk of failure (as Zurbuchen said, taking multiple shots on goal), and then the agency realized that they had a problem and they needed to fix it. It is good that they're trying to fix it, but it raises the question about the original decisions made when CLPS was set up.
And at the risk of ranting here, one of my issues with CLPS is that we have a lot of experience with planetary programs and we know how to do these things right, and we also know what happens if we fail. What happens is that failures of planetary programs attract a lot more political scrutiny than failures of other programs unless they are very expensive. The lesson was the late 1990s failures of two Mars missions, which resulted in NASA getting a lot of public and political criticism. So jump to today and ask what will happen if NASA crashes two lunar landers into the Moon after we have seen multiple successful ambitious Chinese landers, and a successful Indian lander? It will result in a lot of scrutiny, and maybe a review board, and then we may experience deja vu all over again. It's one thing to accept a "higher risk posture," it's another thing to ignore decades of experience about what works and what does not work.
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But this part above is missing my point--what I have heard (maybe it is not accurate?) is that NASA has provided this additional mission/engineering support after it became apparent that the companies lacked capabilities...
FWIW, I saw little or no evidence of this happening on the one CLPS mission I've been associated with, but I can't say anything more and it might have been happening out of my view.
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what I have heard (maybe it is not accurate?) is that NASA has provided this additional mission/engineering support after it became apparent that the companies lacked capabilities, and that the risk of failure was higher than originally expected or desired. That's a different thing than the standard practice of teaming up NASA civil servant expertise with contractors. That's not what they did with CLPS. And that was the context of my original post about risk--CLPS was set up to accept more risk of failure (as Zurbuchen said, taking multiple shots on goal), and then the agency realized that they had a problem and they needed to fix it. It is good that they're trying to fix it, but it raises the question about the original decisions made when CLPS was set up.
And at the risk of ranting here, one of my issues with CLPS is that we have a lot of experience with planetary programs and we know how to do these things right, and we also know what happens if we fail...
It's one thing to accept a "higher risk posture," it's another thing to ignore decades of experience about what works and what does not work.
I think this confuses two different things.
In point of fact, NASA does not manage all flight projects — or even all planetary missions —the same way. Per NASA Procedural Requirements like 7120.5 (Space Flight Program and Project Management) or 8705.4 (Risk Classification for NASA Payloads), there are different project categories based on the life-cycle cost for that project, whether radioactive materials or human crew are involved, and the degree to which the project is critical for future efforts or other reasons. Roughly speaking, Category 1 is $2B+, Category 2 is $365M to $2B, and Category 3 is <$365M. NASA does not levy the same requirements — oversight, redundancy, LV experience, etc. — across all these categories. A Category 3 project like a CLPS mission will have less burdensome requirements than and is managed differently from a Category 2 project like a Discovery mission. And both of them will have less burdensome requirements than and be managed differently from a Category 1 project like MSR.
But even if you’re in Category 3 like CLPS missions are, that doesn’t excuse doing stupid things, like not making NASA domain expertise available to the project. If LockMart requires NASA domain expertise to pull off a planetary landing, then obviously a company like Intuitive Systems will, too. I don’t know the extent to which the program actually screwed this up and had to correct it, or if your source just misinterpreted things and/or spread uninformed rumors. But making that kind of correction doesn’t mean that the program has changed risk management categories or otherwise became more or less risk-averse. It just means the program stopped something stupid.
What happens is that failures of planetary programs attract a lot more political scrutiny than failures of other programs unless they are very expensive. The lesson was the late 1990s failures of two Mars missions, which resulted in NASA getting a lot of public and political criticism.
I was covering Space Science at OMB during the MCO/MPL failures. Got the Young briefing on them. Went out to JPL to help kick off the Mars program replan. Etc. Goldin had to sit through a couple House Science Committee hearings on the failures that were broadly supportive of NASA, but that was it for political fallout. From where I sat, there was no White House fallout. In the light of those failures, Goldin wanted two MERS rovers instead of one. My boss and I agreed and delivered the funding. There was no pushback from the political level above us. Appropriators agreed or didn’t pay attention. The rest is history.
There was negative press. But my 2 cents is that the press that comes out of a mission (success or failure) is a function of the degree to which NASA has stirred up press interest going into that mission. I doubt NASA will stir up the same level of press interest in these CLPS missions as it did for MCO/MPL. Even if it does and there’s some negative press from a failure or two, so what? It’s not like the Mars program was terminated or even had its budget reduced. Instead we added funding for the second MERS.
So jump to today and ask what will happen if NASA crashes two lunar landers into the Moon after we have seen multiple successful ambitious Chinese landers, and a successful Indian lander? It will result in a lot of scrutiny, and maybe a review board, and then we may experience deja vu all over again.
There’s always a review board at some level after a mission loss.
Again, MCO/MPL political blowback was a couple friendly House hearings, and I imagine a CLPS failure or two will generate even less.
Some press may paint negative comparisons to foreign successes like you did. Others may point out foreign failures or that the program has multiple landers in the queue. Like most press, I don’t think it will really matter.
What matters, IMO, is that planetary science finally has something akin to the Explorers Program, where future PIs can get flight experience, where new instruments can be proven out, and where novel technologies and approaches can be tried in a low-cost, risk-taking, Category 3 environment against a nearby target. None of that would happen in Flagship/Category 1 or Discovery/Category 2 environments — it just wouldn’t exist. To me, that’s worth a negative press cycle or dragging an administrator to a supportive House hearing.
YMMV... FWIW.
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NASA stored LCH4 on orbit with zero boiloff for four months on CRS-16. See Robotic Refueling Mission 3. LCH4 with boiloff for days is comparatively straightforward.
Centaurs have demonstrated LOX (and LH2) storage and firings after ~10 hours with about 2% loss. There are several types of diesel submarine that rely on multi-week storage of liquid oxygen for underwater operation and propulsion. One can buy LOX dewars online. The devil is always in the details, but multi-day storage of LOX is hardly witchcraft.
I didn't know that liquid methane storage on orbit had been demonstrated. However on CRS-16, they had a cryocooler to keep the methane liquid, and they stored the methane in a dewar tank that was probably heavy and very well insulated. All that requires mass and power. A rocket stage needs the lightest possible tank, but it will have to be well enough insulated to keep boil-off to an acceptable level. It is one more thing that can go wrong. On CRS-16 the cryocooler failed early, and the tank had to be vented.
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What matters, IMO, is that planetary science finally has something akin to the Explorers Program, where future PIs can get flight experience, where new instruments can be proven out, and where novel technologies and approaches can be tried in a low-cost, risk-taking, Category 3 environment against a nearby target.
If there is a need for small missions then why not do a downsized version of the Discovery program? The size of those missions has grown a lot over the years. The first one, Lunar Prospector, had an inflation adjusted cost of $123 milllion. The recent DART mission was $357 million. Small missions that fit under your $365 million limit are certainly viable.
NASA did try something like that with the SIMPLEX program, but the rideshare strategy really didn't work. If the smallest planetary launch vehicle is a Falcon 9 costing $75 million, then a $55 million limit like SIMPLEX won't work. $300 million probably would.
CLPS was really industrial policy aimed at supporting small aerospace companies building lunar landers. The science has very much been an afterthought. Nor is there any strategy for Artemis support. If these missions produce good science or help Artemis that will be a lucky outcome, rather than something that was planned from the beginning.
Not all the science payloads are cheap. The VIPER rover is moderately expensive, and there is only one of them. Not a good fit for landers with a high failure rate.
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NASA stored LCH4 on orbit with zero boiloff for four months on CRS-16. See Robotic Refueling Mission 3. LCH4 with boiloff for days is comparatively straightforward.
Centaurs have demonstrated LOX (and LH2) storage and firings after ~10 hours with about 2% loss. There are several types of diesel submarine that rely on multi-week storage of liquid oxygen for underwater operation and propulsion. One can buy LOX dewars online. The devil is always in the details, but multi-day storage of LOX is hardly witchcraft.
I didn't know that liquid methane storage on orbit had been demonstrated. However on CRS-16, they had a cryocooler to keep the methane liquid, and they stored the methane in a dewar tank that was probably heavy and very well insulated. All that requires mass and power. A rocket stage needs the lightest possible tank, but it will have to be well enough insulated to keep boil-off to an acceptable level. It is one more thing that can go wrong. On CRS-16 the cryocooler failed early, and the tank had to be vented.
A rocket tank in space is a Dewar, to a first approximation. It does not need to be insulated. It needs to be shielded from insolation and other received radiation. It may also need systems to remove any heat energy that does reach it, such as the elegant "Integrated Vehicle Fluids" system that ULA proposed for ACES.
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If there is a need for small missions then why not do a downsized version of the Discovery program? The size of those missions has grown a lot over the years. The first one, Lunar Prospector, had an inflation adjusted cost of $123 milllion. The recent DART mission was $357 million. Small missions that fit under your $365 million limit are certainly viable.
NASA did try something like that with the SIMPLEX program, but the rideshare strategy really didn't work. If the smallest planetary launch vehicle is a Falcon 9 costing $75 million, then a $55 million limit like SIMPLEX won't work. $300 million probably would.
You answered your own question. Most/all of the low-hanging Discovery fruit has been picked. Competitive planetary research that can continue pushing back the scientific frontier requires more expensive missions than what Discovery started with a quarter century ago. And even if we can identify a couple low-cost yet competitive missions, the rideshare concept has not worked out for anyone (even instruments on comsats to GEO, forget different planetary targets).
For the most part, CLPS is not in that category of competitive research at the scientific frontier. It was a way for Zurbuchen to garner additional funding for planetary science from the larger human lunar return initiative by marrying some low-cost, independent platforms to research that, while not competitive at the Discovery or higher level, was still good and worthwhile. Why folks want to look that gift-horse in the mouth is rather boggling.
CLPS was really industrial policy
It’s not. Per Zurbuchen, It’s about getting more research done, getting more experience with fight projects in the pipeline, and maybe figuring out a way to get more bang for the buck. It may also have the salutary effect of creating some new providers and competition in planetary science spacecraft. But that’s not industrial policy. The budget is just not there to do this kind of work with traditional providers in a Class 2 environment. It requires of lower-cost providers in a Class 3 environment. These firms are enablers for this work. They’re not receiving hand-outs.
The science has very much been an afterthought.
No, the program had to be kicked off using research and instruments that were as close to off-the-shelf as possible. The selection process since then has and will continue to mature.
Nor is there any strategy for Artemis support.
Like so many human space flight efforts, Artemis programmatics are a joke. That’s not the fault of CLPS.
The VIPER rover is moderately expensive, and there is only one of them. Not a good fit for landers with a high failure rate.
What high failure rate? What database of past CLPS missions are you looking at to make up these false statements?
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Not all the science payloads are cheap. The VIPER rover is moderately expensive, and there is only one of them. Not a good fit for [unproven landers].
And clearly, NASA has decided it agrees with you, given that they have greatly increased the budget to accommodate more refinement of the design and a lot more testing of the lander!
But VIPER is clearly a unique case for CLPS missions. None of the other missions awarded are asking contractors to deliver anything like that.
(For the record, though, I do increasingly share the concern that Dr Z's team set the award amounts a little low for CLPS. I would not jump up to the $300-400M level, but I can at least see a case for increasing awards by 30-50% and simply dropping a couple future awards to accommodate it in the budget. Maxar might well have gone bankrupt no matter what, but it still looks like a warning sign to me.)
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Maxar might well have gone bankrupt no matter what, but it still looks like a warning sign to me.
I suppose you mean Masten, not Maxar?
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Maxar might well have gone bankrupt no matter what, but it still looks like a warning sign to me.
I suppose you mean Masten, not Maxar?
Yes. Argh. Brainfart.
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IM-1 delayed to Jan 12th, so it look like Peregrine will be going first on Dec 24th. Three months from now we will know a lot more about this program.
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IM-1 and Peregrine may end up attempting landings on consecutive days?
A launch on Jan. 12 would set up the spacecraft for a landing attempt on the moon Jan. 19. While IM-1 is now scheduled to launch after Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander, slated to lift off on the inaugural Vulcan Centaur Dec. 24, it may land before Peregrine, which is taking a less direct trajectory to the moon. Altemus said in the call that he understood that, if Peregrine launches on time, it would attempt its landing Jan. 20, a day after IM-1.
https://spacenews.com/intuitive-machines-planning-up-to-three-lunar-lander-missions-in-2024/
The main point of the article, though, is that Intuitive says they will attempt to do three CLPS missions in 2024.
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This is an update of an earlier post:
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If there are no more delays (a big IF, certainly) Astrobotic's lander will launch before IM-1, currently aiming for 24 December. If Intuitive Machines launches on 12 January the landings would actually happen close together, round about the 19th of January, and SLIM is also set to land at the same time.
It is possible that we will see three landing attempts in a single week. If we assume every landing happens about 2 days after sunrise (so descent imaging is not too complicated by shadows) they would occur in the order of increasing west longitude, i.e. SLIM, then Intuitive, then Astrobotic. Dates might be roughly January 18, 20 and 23 (Thursday, Saturday, Tuesday).
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Astrobotic says the date is uncertain, as after all we don't know exactly which day they will launch. But the landing can't be too much later than c. Jan. 23-25 because of the lighting. So either they land in that week or they delay a whole month.
The important thing, though, is that SLIM is in the mix too. They are aiming for a landing on the 19th, but that is the time in Japan.
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Scott Manley said in his recent video that IM1 is in May:
https://youtu.be/muK6gFtv7_o?t=660
Time in the video 11:00 to 11:10
Did you hear that perhaps anywhere else? Perhaps he made a mistake?
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CLPS IM-1 What's On Board Briefing Media Teleconference
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tmMjySvJCwg
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Cross-post:
NASA host says the name of the lander is Odysseus.
https://twitter.com/SpcPlcyOnline/status/1752791691298324705
Trent Martin, Intuitive Machines: Odysseus is now encapsulated in SpaceX payload fairing.
https://twitter.com/SpcPlcyOnline/status/1752794537565528283
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Intuitive Machines tweeted the lander's name on 22 December:
https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1738205371481595985 (https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1738205371481595985)
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Oh, nice, it looks like it will be launched with legs fully extended.
(https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/im1_fairing.jpg)
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Is Odysseus launching tonight or tomorrow?
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Is Odysseus launching tonight or tomorrow?
SpaceX says Thursday early am. I suppose for most Americans that's Wednesday still?
https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1757623502289686797?s=20
Standing down from tonight’s attempt due to off-nominal methane temperatures prior to stepping into methane load. Now targeting Thursday, February 15 at 1:05 a.m. ET for Falcon 9's launch of the
@Int_Machines
IM-1 mission from Florida → http://spacex.com/launches
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Is Odysseus launching tonight or tomorrow?
That's a question for this mission's launch thread in the SpaceX missions section of the forum.
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Intuitive Machines seems to be unable to provide any kind of worthwhile map of the landing site so I suppose I will have to do it for them. It would really help to have a map of the landing ellipse.
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To illustrate the frustration of not having a definitive map of the target, here's a screenshot from Quickmap showing the position defined by coordinates at the Planetary Science Advisory Committee meeting in June 2023 (80.297º S, 1.2613º E) and the map illustrated on the LRO camera website ( https://www.lroc.asu.edu/posts/1321 (https://www.lroc.asu.edu/posts/1321) ). They are 3000 m apart. The LRO site is much smoother than the PSAC site. On the other hand we must remember that the LROC NAC images in that Quickmap image still have small errors of registration and can't be counted on to be exact. But they won't be 3000 m out.
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Congrats to SpaceX, Intuitive Machines and NASA! Kicking off the post-launch coverage:
First update on the website:
The IM-1 mission Nova-C class lunar lander has launched on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and successfully commissioned in space by establishing a stable attitude, solar charging, and radio communications contact with the Company’s mission operations center in Houston.
https://www.intuitivemachines.com/im-1
IM-1 Mission Nova-C Lunar Lander Successfully Enroute to the Moon Following its Launch on SpaceX’s Falcon 9:
https://investors.intuitivemachines.com/news-releases/news-release-details/im-1-mission-nova-c-lunar-lander-successfully-enroute-moon
https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1758134068644884487
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The JPL Horizons system (https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons/app.html) has some useful information about IM-1 if you go try to generate ephemeris for the spacecraft. (Search for IM-1 as target body.)
I'm not sure it's 100% correct because I'm not sure the F9 2nd stage did a 185 km x 60,000 km pseudo-parking orbit before TLI. Jonathan's attempt at reconstructing the TLEs after SECO-1 (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=49177.msg2568041#msg2568041) (and my own eyes watching the broadcast) suggest a 160 km x 230 km parking orbit, and his SECO-2 reconstruction suggests a full TLI burn from the 2nd stage to moon orbit distance, with a 60,000km orbit never occurring at all.
Still, it's worth quoting in full, I think.
BACKGROUND
Intuitive Machine's Nova-C class IM-1 lunar lander "Odysseus" launched
February 15, 2024 @ 06:05 UTC from LC-39A at Cape Canaveral (USA) on a
SpaceX Falcon 9.
It will be the first commercial lunar lander by a private company, and was
selected through NASA's CLPS initiative.
It is planned to land on the Moon about 9 days after launch (~Feb 24) and
operate for about 7 days after touchdown (until local sunset), about 300 km
from the south pole at crater Malapert A. This is close to the Malapert
Massif, a candidate landing zone for NASA's Artemis III manned-mission.
The Falcon 9 second stage will place the spacecraft into a 185 x 60000 km
Earth orbit. After ~35 minutes of coasting, the second stage will then propel
Odysseus into a Trans-Lunar Orbit (TLO) intercepting the Moon's orbit.
Deployment of the spacecraft is to occur 48 minutes and 24 seconds after
launch when the second stage will use spring force to push the lander away.
Odysseus will make three small adjustment burns en route before the TLO
trajectory takes IM-1 behind the Moon. The main engine autonomous Lunar
Orbit Injection (LOI) burn will place Odysseus into a near-circular 100-km
Low-Lunar Orbit.
Throughout twelve 2-hour-long orbits of the Moon, checks of all spacecraft
systems will be completed before committing to a lunar descent.
The autonomous Descent Orbit Burn will take place on the far side of the
Moon and reduce the craft's orbit to 10 kilometers above the landing site.
The craft will then coast for an hour before powered descent.
The Nova-C class main engine is designed to burn continuously throughout the
powered descent. The lander will be slowed by 1,800 meters per second, then
pitched over to assume landing attitude when 30 meters above the lunar
surface, before bringing the craft to a soft landing.
PURPOSE
The mission' primary objective is to deliver a variety of payloads to the
Moon's south pole region, a part of the Moon that remains unexplored and is
a target for later NASA Artemis manned missions. These payloads include
scientific instruments and technology demonstrations that aim to inform
future human and robotic exploration of the Moon.
SPACECRAFT
Hexagonal cylinder 4.3 m tall, 1.57 m wide, on six landing legs.
Launch mass : 1908 kg
Solar panels : ~200 Watts
PROPULSION
Liquid methane and liquid oxygen
ISP > 320 sec.
SCIENCE INSTRUMENTS
NASA
ROLSES: Radio Observations of the Lunar Surface Photoelectron Sheath
LRA: Laser Retro-Reflector Array
NDL: Navigation Doppler Lidar for Precise Velocity and Range Sensing
SCALPSS: Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies
LN-1: Lunar Node 1 Navigation Demonstrator (S-band navigation beacon)
RFMG: Radio Frequency Mass Gauge statement
Commerical
Columbia Sportswear: Omni-heat infinity thermal material
Embry-Riddle: Eaglecam
Jeff Koons: Moon Phases (125 artwork items)
International Lunar Observatory Association: ILO-X
Galactic Legacy Labs: LUNAPRISE
Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.
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Scott Tilley has generated visualizations from the above-mentioned JPL Horizons preliminary ephemeris:
https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1757581664216109434
https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1757581669337342025
https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1757581673934328101
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*******************************************************************************
Ephemeris / WWW_USER Thu Feb 15 12:27:59 2024 Pasadena, USA / Horizons
*******************************************************************************
Target body name: IM-1 (spacecraft) (-229) {source: LND1_n229-Feb15}
[...]
******************************************************************************
Date__(UT)__HR:MN delta deldot
***************************************************
2024-Feb-15 21:26 1.5000966312E+05 1.7861738
*******************************************************************************
The JPL ephemeris says IM-1 is now 150,000 km from the center of the Earth with a relative velocity of 1.8 km/s. I believe the name of the ephemeris data file has not (yet) changed.
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The JPL ephemeris says IM-1 is now 150,000 km from the center of the Earth with a relative velocity of 1.8 km/s. I believe the name of the ephemeris data file has not (yet) changed.
For reference, that data file is described by JPL Horizons as "Pre-launch trajectory from Intuitive Machines."
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Has a timeline been published for IM-1?
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Has a timeline been published for IM-1?
Not in detail. During the media telecon they explicitly deferred providing a precise timeline until after the launch, since it would differ between the launch opportunities.
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According to a publication at SpaceFlightNow, the most critical step is at about 18 hours post deployment, which 3 hours from now. They'll fire the engine for a first time in deep space. Since a methalox engine has never been tested beyond LEO and this specific engine has never been fully tested in vacuum (only the igniter has been tested), it's an important milestone.
If it's passed, the chance for success greatly increases.
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https://twitter.com/s2a_systems/status/1758090532339712318
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The JPL Horizons system (https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons/app.html) has some useful information about IM-1 if you go try to generate ephemeris for the spacecraft. (Search for IM-1 as target body.)
I'm not sure it's 100% correct because I'm not sure the F9 2nd stage did a 185 km x 60,000 km pseudo-parking orbit before TLI. Jonathan's attempt at reconstructing the TLEs after SECO-1 (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=49177.msg2568041#msg2568041) (and my own eyes watching the broadcast) suggest a 160 km x 230 km parking orbit, and his SECO-2 reconstruction suggests a full TLI burn from the 2nd stage to moon orbit distance, with a 60,000km orbit never occurring at all.
Still, it's worth quoting in full, I think.
BACKGROUND
Intuitive Machine's Nova-C class IM-1 lunar lander "Odysseus" launched
February 15, 2024 @ 06:05 UTC from LC-39A at Cape Canaveral (USA) on a
SpaceX Falcon 9.
It will be the first commercial lunar lander by a private company, and was
selected through NASA's CLPS initiative.
It is planned to land on the Moon about 9 days after launch (~Feb 24) and
operate for about 7 days after touchdown (until local sunset), about 300 km
from the south pole at crater Malapert A. This is close to the Malapert
Massif, a candidate landing zone for NASA's Artemis III manned-mission.
The Falcon 9 second stage will place the spacecraft into a 185 x 60000 km
Earth orbit. After ~35 minutes of coasting, the second stage will then propel
Odysseus into a Trans-Lunar Orbit (TLO) intercepting the Moon's orbit.
Deployment of the spacecraft is to occur 48 minutes and 24 seconds after
launch when the second stage will use spring force to push the lander away.
Odysseus will make three small adjustment burns en route before the TLO
trajectory takes IM-1 behind the Moon. The main engine autonomous Lunar
Orbit Injection (LOI) burn will place Odysseus into a near-circular 100-km
Low-Lunar Orbit.
Throughout twelve 2-hour-long orbits of the Moon, checks of all spacecraft
systems will be completed before committing to a lunar descent.
The autonomous Descent Orbit Burn will take place on the far side of the
Moon and reduce the craft's orbit to 10 kilometers above the landing site.
The craft will then coast for an hour before powered descent.
The Nova-C class main engine is designed to burn continuously throughout the
powered descent. The lander will be slowed by 1,800 meters per second, then
pitched over to assume landing attitude when 30 meters above the lunar
surface, before bringing the craft to a soft landing.
PURPOSE
The mission' primary objective is to deliver a variety of payloads to the
Moon's south pole region, a part of the Moon that remains unexplored and is
a target for later NASA Artemis manned missions. These payloads include
scientific instruments and technology demonstrations that aim to inform
future human and robotic exploration of the Moon.
SPACECRAFT
Hexagonal cylinder 4.3 m tall, 1.57 m wide, on six landing legs.
Launch mass : 1908 kg
Solar panels : ~200 Watts
PROPULSION
Liquid methane and liquid oxygen
ISP > 320 sec.
SCIENCE INSTRUMENTS
NASA
ROLSES: Radio Observations of the Lunar Surface Photoelectron Sheath
LRA: Laser Retro-Reflector Array
NDL: Navigation Doppler Lidar for Precise Velocity and Range Sensing
SCALPSS: Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies
LN-1: Lunar Node 1 Navigation Demonstrator (S-band navigation beacon)
RFMG: Radio Frequency Mass Gauge statement
Commerical
Columbia Sportswear: Omni-heat infinity thermal material
Embry-Riddle: Eaglecam
Jeff Koons: Moon Phases (125 artwork items)
International Lunar Observatory Association: ILO-X
Galactic Legacy Labs: LUNAPRISE
Lonestar Data Holdings Inc.
Actual parking orbit was 155 x 236 km, 28.47°:
https://twitter.com/TSKelso/status/1758254350898708933
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The TLEs for the spacecraft and the upper stage are essentially identical:
IM-3
1 58963U 24030A 24046.25887661 .00002374 -75020-5 00000+0 0 9994
2 58963 28.4700 67.9440 0061700 102.0800 358.1600 16.28919584 05
FALCON 9 R/B
1 58964U 24030B 24046.25887661 .00002374 -75020-5 00000+0 0 9995
2 58964 28.4700 67.9440 0061700 102.0800 358.1600 16.28919584 06
Does this imply the observation was made prior to spacecraft separation?
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Yes, these TLE are for the low Earth orbit prior to the TLI burn which was done by the second stage.
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The TLEs for the spacecraft and the upper stage are essentially identical:
[snip]
Does this imply the observation was made prior to spacecraft separation?
The TLE's epoch is 2024-02-15 at 06:12:46 UTC. I don't know the liftoff time to the second, to the minute it was 06:05 UTC. SECO-1 was at T+7:54. Did they take the measurements for that TLE even before SECO-1?
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An update from Intuitive Machines: https://www.intuitivemachines.com/_files/ugd/7c27f7_6f08ded687bb4950bff004e566d8e2f0.pdf
edit: mandrewa posted the contents below.
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An update from Intuitive Machine's website, quote:
The IM-1 mission Nova-C class lunar lander continues to be in excellent health, and we are
preparing for our engine commissioning maneuver.
Following nominal launch vehicle separation, the spacecraft autonomously brought up all
sensors and radios. Odysseus listened to the Inertial Measurement Unit to determine attitude
rates and activated the Reaction Control System to nullify those attitude rates as designed.
Earlier today, Nova-C’s navigation system rejected star tracker data, but a patch has been sent
to the spacecraft, and the star tracker updates have resumed nominal operations.
Initially, the star tracker information was numerically conditioned slightly differently than
we anticipated. We were expecting a one-in-a-thousand numerical tolerance and received a
number more like two and three in a thousand. So, Nova-C’s navigation system rejected the star
tracker data.
When we tested this system terrestrially, they were within tolerance, but we experienced slightly
different numerical conditioning in flight.
The vehicle had a very low rate of rotation, approximately .15 degrees per second, mostly around
the long axis, which caused our solar arrays and antennas to rotate in and out of the desired
attitude.
We noticed that, at one point, we passed through Nova-C’s max power attitude, and we recorded
the artificial attitude. We then manually forced the navigation system to advance to attitude
pointing and commanded the vehicle to go to the maximum power attitude we observed.
This put Nova-C into a power-positive configuration and fully charged Nova-C’s batteries. With
the diagnostic data we collected, we identified a patch to align the numerical conditioning of
the star tracker data with our navigation system’s acceptance test. We tested the patch on the
ground, sent it to the spacecraft, restarted the star tracker, and immediately began processing
star tracker updates – resuming nominal operations.
Again, the IM-1 mission Nova-C class lunar lander is in excellent health, and we are preparing for
Odysseus’ commissioning maneuver.
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https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1758293888811368532/photo/1
IM-1 Mission Vehicle Health Update 🧵
1/6 The IM-1 mission Nova-C class lunar lander continues to be in excellent health, and we are preparing for our engine commissioning maneuver.
Following nominal launch vehicle separation, the spacecraft autonomously brought up all sensors and radios. Odysseus listened to the Inertial Measurement Unit to determine attitude rates and activated the Reaction Control System to nullify those attitude rates as designed.
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Cross post from launch thread. I assume the other dot is the second stage. Disposal?
https://twitter.com/s2a_systems/status/1758090532339712318
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Just for fun, scaled and cropped to 800x800. Image credit: SpaceX.
Replace with smaller version, with embedded credit, for copyright infringement safety
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An update from Intuitive Machine's website, quote:
...
We then manually forced the navigation system to advance to attitude
pointing and commanded the vehicle to go to the maximum power attitude we observed.
This put Nova-C into a power-positive configuration and fully charged Nova-C’s batteries.
...
This sounds like a close call. They weren't power-positive until manually commanding an attitude, meaning the clock was ticking on resolving the issue, and all because some component(s) in the star tracker didn't perform quite as well as in ground testing.
It's a reminder of just how many things can go wrong with a brand new spacecraft attempting such a challenging mission. Let's hope engine commissioning goes well so that we can look forward to a lunar landing attempt.
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Not strictly launch related, but this animation nicely shows the trans-lunar trajectory enabled by the launch. (If needed, click gif to animate.)
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
Author: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Phoenix7777
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Celestrak has received updated TLEs for IM-1:
IM-1
1 58963U 24030A 24046.86640046 -.00014929 00000+0 00000+0 0 9994
2 58963 28.6500 67.7900 9686440 239.7630 18.8830 0.08992573 90
That's a 220 km x 407909 km x 28.65 deg orbit, with an 11.12 day period.
Edit: With a bit of fiddling, I propagated the TLE out to the current time (well, it was the current time when I started fiddling) and got a distance from Earth's center at 6:30 UTC of 201,263 km, which is pretty darn close to the pre-launch trajectory sent to JPL Horizons. The ephemeris there predicts 201,282 km for this time.
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*******************************************************************************
Ephemeris / WWW_USER Thu Feb 15 12:27:59 2024 Pasadena, USA / Horizons
*******************************************************************************
Target body name: IM-1 (spacecraft) (-229) {source: LND1_n229-Feb15}
[...]
******************************************************************************
Date__(UT)__HR:MN delta deldot
***************************************************
2024-Feb-15 21:26 1.5000966312E+05 1.7861738
*******************************************************************************
The JPL ephemeris says IM-1 is now 150,000 km from the center of the Earth with a relative velocity of 1.8 km/s. I believe the name of the ephemeris data file has not (yet) changed.
My advanced graphical interface to access NASA Horizons data:
https://win98.altervista.org/space/exploration/NHUGUI.html
IM-1 has id "-229".
Moon center: @301
Earth center: @399
Sun center: @0
On lower right corner you find a "plot column" button: if you selected "VECTOR" as "table type", column 9 will contain distance from center object; insert "-1737" in the box to subtract Moon radius and see IM-1 altitude above Moon surface.
You can also get "Moon local time", see attached screenshots.
I attach current Horizons data (pre-launch), which will get deleted once recorded trajectory will be available on Horizons.
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Latest update (quoted up thread) attached
https://www.intuitivemachines.com/_files/ugd/7c27f7_6f08ded687bb4950bff004e566d8e2f0.pdf
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According to a publication at SpaceFlightNow, the most critical step is at about 18 hours post deployment, which 3 hours from now. They'll fire the engine for a first time in deep space. Since a methalox engine has never been tested beyond LEO and this specific engine has never been fully tested in vacuum (only the igniter has been tested), it's an important milestone.
If it's passed, the chance for success greatly increases.
Any news about this? Should have happened a while ago as per the timeline, unless they've deferred it after the issues with navigation... but they only have so much time to loiter with the direct trajectory they're following, as opposed to -for example- Peregrine.
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Its still not start of the work day in US yet, perhaps the people making the press releases work 9 to 5. This is what I hope is the reason for no news.
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According to a publication at SpaceFlightNow, the most critical step is at about 18 hours post deployment, which 3 hours from now. They'll fire the engine for a first time in deep space. Since a methalox engine has never been tested beyond LEO and this specific engine has never been fully tested in vacuum (only the igniter has been tested), it's an important milestone.
If it's passed, the chance for success greatly increases.
Any news about this? Should have happened a while ago as per the timeline, unless they've deferred it after the issues with navigation... but they only have so much time to loiter with the direct trajectory they're following, as opposed to -for example- Peregrine.
Around the hour announced by SpaceflightNow, Intuitive Machines published their last update about the general state of Odysseus. So I assume that the procedure may have been delayed. This would be expected, especially if they needed time to fix their star tracker.
We all saw the good press from Astrobotic - however the mission suffered a critical malfunction, people wanted to know more and we got very frequent releases. But if we have healthy spacecraft (as it appears to be the case), I don't expect many updates on the way to the Moon. Perhaps general information about system checks, some photos of the Earth and Moon.
But I agree - one of the things we have to hear from Intuitive Machines is whether the fuel system and the engine work as expected. Let's hope we'll have that confirmation soon.
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Range was 233591 kms as of 240216T1329 UTC.
Live updates of IM-1 data stream (not continuous as it switches to other satellites)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pPBCIpVGsM
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Range was 233591 kms as of 240216T1329 UTC.
Live updates of IM-1 data stream (not continuous as it switches to other satellites)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pPBCIpVGsM
The top half is apparently a frequency signal strength display with the peak being the main vehicle transmitter. Can someone explain the bottom display?
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https://twitter.com/int_machines/status/1758582475087925448
1/4 IM-1 Mission Engine Commissioning Update 🧵(16FEB2024 1400 CST)
The IM-1 mission Nova-C class lunar lander continues to be in excellent health, in a stable orientation and remains on schedule for a lunar landing opportunity on the afternoon of February 22. The original mission structure allocated a Commission Maneuver (CM) and three trajectory correction maneuvers to position for Lunar Orbit Insertion. This approach provided flexibility in the mission’s engine burn schedule to allow for learning as we operate the lander in the vacuum of space. Adjusting for this learning process is why the team chose to delay the burn on February 15.
2/4 Communication delays and outages are expected when executing lunar missions, which we accounted for in our mission planning. While preparing for the CM burn last night, flight controllers experienced intermittent uplink and downlink data communications between Nova-C and the ground stations, potentially impacting our ability to collect the critical information required to support the CM burn and follow-on performance analysis.
3/4 As we prepared for the first-ever in-space ignition of a liquid methane and liquid oxygen engine, we reviewed our Earth-based test data against the data we’ve accumulated in space. The in-space performance demonstrated that it takes longer to chill the liquid oxygen feed line than the Earth-based testing. After understanding the in-space liquid oxygen feedline requirements, we adjusted and uploaded the CM burn preparation timeline and increased the onboard event sequence timer.
4/4 Again, the IM-1 mission Nova-C class lunar lander is in excellent health, and we expect to continue to provide mission updates at least once a day on X and the IM-1 Mission webpage.
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OFFICIAL UPDATE:
As I presumed, the engine activation has been delayed for some time. It's largely due to some issues with ground stations leading to interruptions. The spacecraft remains healthy.
https://www.intuitivemachines.com/_files/ugd/7c27f7_0c7c9c1dddb0422694b16e6ec4c28242.pdf
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Range was 233591 kms as of 240216T1329 UTC.
Live updates of IM-1 data stream (not continuous as it switches to other satellites)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pPBCIpVGsM
The top half is apparently a frequency signal strength display with the peak being the main vehicle transmitter. Can someone explain the bottom display?
It's a spectrogram - showing changes of the spectrum with time (the vertical axis)
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JPL Horizons now has updated trajectory information for IM-1. It has a timestamp in its filename of 2-16-2024 at 1423UTC.
That data says IM-1 should currently be 259,440 km above Earth (that's altitude, not distance from Earth center) and traveling 1.02 km/s, which comports well with the range data being shared by Bochum Observatory. (the live video in the above post.)
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JPL Horizons now has updated trajectory information for IM-1. It has a timestamp in its filename of 2-16-2024 at 1423UTC.
That data says IM-1 should currently be 259,440 km above Earth (that's altitude, not distance from Earth center) and traveling 1.02 km/s, which comports well with the range data being shared by Bochum Observatory. (the live video in the above post.)
Is there a diagram showing how far along the trajectory it now is?
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Is there a diagram showing how far along the trajectory it now is?
Huh. JPL Horizons says:
*******************************************************************************
Date__(UT)__HR:MN delta deldot
***************************************************
2024-Feb-16 22:15 2.6874451975E+05 1.0082996
*******************************************************************************
2.7*10^5 km ~= 70% of lunar distance. Not the result I was expecting so soon.
The top half is apparently a frequency signal strength display with the peak being the main vehicle transmitter. Can someone explain the bottom display?
It's a spectrogram - showing changes of the spectrum with time (the vertical axis)
Believe this to be the (checked) "waterfall" option of the interface. This type of animation is really quite nice!
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OFFICIAL UPDATE:
As I presumed, the engine activation has been delayed for some time. It's largely due to some issues with ground stations leading to interruptions. The spacecraft remains healthy.
https://www.intuitivemachines.com/_files/ugd/7c27f7_0c7c9c1dddb0422694b16e6ec4c28242.pdf
AND unexpected thermal behavior of the MPS lines, which sounds more concerning even if it's mentioned later.
Is there a diagram showing how far along the trajectory it now is?
Huh. JPL Horizons says:]
2.7*10^5 km ~= 70% of lunar distance. Not the result I was expecting so soon.
It starts fast, and starts slowing down like a regular elliptical trajectory towards apogee (Earth keeps pulling it down) until it'll arrive at an almost standstill with respect to Earth, by which point the Moon will pass it by and accelerate it again... but you want it to go as slow as possible with respect to the Moon to manage to get captured with just a "small" push from the lander itself.
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2.7*10^5 km ~= 70% of lunar distance. Not the result I was expecting so soon.
It's worth seeing a bit of a visual indicator of how the Earth is always pulling you back down and slowing your velocity as you approach the moon, so you get a big burst of progress early on that drops off quick as well. Here's how the velocity changes in km/s day by day:
2024-Feb-15 07:00 4.5658206
2024-Feb-16 07:00 1.3805683
2024-Feb-17 07:00 0.8387717
2024-Feb-18 07:00 0.5439953
2024-Feb-19 07:00 0.3052289
Also worth noting: according to the trajectory data, it's going to go past the moon and catch it on the way back, so it has further to go than just the lunar distance.
(edit: looks like eeergo beat me to some of the above; hopefully seeing the data helps, though)
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To satisfy the request for a realtime diagram, I've taken the trajectory gif mentioned in a previous post (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=59696.msg2568358#msg2568358) and reencoded it as an mp4 to allow for pausing and scrubbing (that's attached below as "im1-pre-launch-traj.mp4"). I'm also including a screenshot of the approximate current position of the spacecraft (and moon).
Note that this diagram was made with the pre-launch trajectory data. To give you an idea of how they differ, the predicted distance from moon for the pre-launch visualization is 293,352 km; the newer trajectory data update post-launch has the distance at 293,530 km.
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To satisfy the request for a realtime diagram, I've taken the trajectory gif mentioned in the previous post and reencoded it as an mp4 to allow for pausing and scrubbing (that's attached below as "im1-pre-launch-traj.mp4"). I'm also including a screenshot the approximate current position of the spacecraft (and moon).
Note that this diagram was made with the pre-launch trajectory data. But to give you an idea of how close it is, the predicted distance from moon for the pre-launch visualization is 293,352 km; the newer trajectory data update post-launch has the distance at 293,530 km.
Thanks! I was trying to watch the GIF but it was hard to keep one eyeball on the clock and another on the pink dot...
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Great news!
https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1758677812217545020
Intuitive Machines flight controllers successfully fired the first liquid methane and liquid oxygen engine in space, completing the IM-1 mission engine commissioning. This engine firing included a full thrust mainstage engine burn and throttle down-profile necessary to land on the Moon.
Over the next eight hours, flight controllers will analyze the engine burn data collected from over 270,000 km away from Earth.
This represents another first for Intuitive Machines, demonstrating one of the critical technologies required to land softly on the surface of the Moon.
The IM-1 mission Nova-C class lunar lander continues to be in excellent health, in a stable orientation and remains on schedule for a lunar landing opportunity on the afternoon of February 22.
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"Thank-you"s to eeergo and theinternetftw. The Keplerian orbital mechanics do explain it, particularly recognizing how highly elliptical this orbit is. As homework I went and found the time JPL Horizons predicts for apogee:
*******************************************************************************
Date__(UT)__HR:MN delta deldot
***************************************************
2024-Feb-20 17:20 4.1154078781E+05 0.0012262
2024-Feb-20 17:30 4.1154106864E+05 -0.0002904
*******************************************************************************
Good thing the commissioning burn of the engine went well; seems likely they'll want to use it around 2024-Feb-20 17:25 UTC, if not before.
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"Thank-you"s to eeergo and theinternetftw. The Keplerian orbital mechanics do explain it, particularly recognizing how highly elliptical this orbit is. As homework I went and found the time JPL Horizons predicts for apogee:
*******************************************************************************
Date__(UT)__HR:MN delta deldot
***************************************************
2024-Feb-20 17:20 4.1154078781E+05 0.0012262
2024-Feb-20 17:30 4.1154106864E+05 -0.0002904
*******************************************************************************
Good thing the commissioning burn of the engine went well; seems likely they'll want to use it around 2024-Feb-20 17:25 UTC, if not before.
Cool to go find the apogee time, it's a milestone I didn't really have in my head. And good thinking to use the horizons data for timeline stuff in general, I have enthusiastically followed that lead below.
The thing about JPL Horizons is it contains the data for the entire planned trajectory, including maneuvers, so if you want to know what IM is going to do in broad strokes, you can just run time forward and see what happens.
And what happens is that they let the thing fall for quite a bit past apogee, about 21 hours, until somewhere around 14:30 UTC on Feb-21, after which the earth-relative velocity starts oscillating - it's in lunar orbit.
2024-Feb-20 17:30 4.1154106864E+05 -0.0002904 ~(apogee)
2024-Feb-20 21:30 4.1127141710E+05 -0.0374198
2024-Feb-21 01:30 4.1045290180E+05 -0.0767602
2024-Feb-21 05:30 4.0903875339E+05 -0.1208018
2024-Feb-21 09:30 4.0691256349E+05 -0.1785238
2024-Feb-21 13:30 4.0349507159E+05 -0.3550113
2024-Feb-21 14:30 4.0168730750E+05 -0.7878508
2024-Feb-21 15:30 4.0114003285E+05 0.5917659
2024-Feb-21 16:30 4.0165590295E+05 -0.5569805
2024-Feb-21 17:30 4.0143627891E+05 0.6341903
2024-Feb-21 18:30 4.0176282605E+05 -0.5949868
(They set their TLI burn up to have an apogee about 75,000 km away from / above the moon, and then burn after falling towards it once they get real close - as to why that apogee, you'd have to ask an orbital mechanic.)
Switching to a moon reference frame and zooming in a bit shows an LOI completion time of somewhere around 14:45 UTC on Feb-21. (And an orbit altitude of around 100km, as reported.) I've seen reports of a 7 minute LOI burn time, but it's hard for me to see it starting in the data like I can see it ending.
2024-Feb-21 14:00 4.3243344258E+03 -1.3671657
2024-Feb-21 14:05 3.9141045955E+03 -1.3663130
2024-Feb-21 14:10 3.5057812623E+03 -1.3532395
2024-Feb-21 14:15 3.1043705241E+03 -1.3180194
2024-Feb-21 14:20 2.7189597551E+03 -1.2425816
2024-Feb-21 14:25 2.3659538603E+03 -1.0952650
2024-Feb-21 14:30 2.0737053936E+03 -0.8288801
2024-Feb-21 14:35 1.8846074435E+03 -0.4054356
2024-Feb-21 14:40 1.8366406867E+03 -0.0017473
2024-Feb-21 14:45 1.8375359391E+03 0.0000418
2024-Feb-21 14:50 1.8375496694E+03 0.0000457
Going forward in the data to around 21:40 UTC on Feb-22, it looks like they do the burn that will drop them to a 10 km perigee, with the landing burn occurring somewhere between 22:35 and 22:50. Which looks like this:
2024-Feb-22 21:40 1.8299997353E+03 -0.0031035
2024-Feb-22 21:45 1.8276200805E+03 -0.0126662
2024-Feb-22 21:50 1.8224903746E+03 -0.0213420
2024-Feb-22 21:55 1.8149549134E+03 -0.0285952
2024-Feb-22 22:00 1.8055448304E+03 -0.0337530
2024-Feb-22 22:05 1.7949362945E+03 -0.0365621
2024-Feb-22 22:10 1.7838868720E+03 -0.0365930
2024-Feb-22 22:15 1.7732308060E+03 -0.0339002
2024-Feb-22 22:20 1.7638373181E+03 -0.0282246
2024-Feb-22 22:25 1.7565191648E+03 -0.0202697
2024-Feb-22 22:30 1.7518248058E+03 -0.0108082
2024-Feb-22 22:35 1.7501500075E+03 -0.0002303
2024-Feb-22 22:40 1.7523936684E+03 0.0091625
2024-Feb-22 22:45 1.7461649598E+03 -0.0468167
2024-Feb-22 22:50 1.7400929420E+03 0.0000001
You can maybe see different stages of the landing sequence if you zoom in more. I've used spacexplorer's horizons front end (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=59696.msg2568383#msg2568383) to graph that data by the minute and attached it below.
Now, of course we've had all this information ever since those animations started showing up, but this is with the latest post-launch (but pre TCM) data, and broken out enough to get the preliminary timeline information.
Which, to recap, is:
~2024-02-21 14:45 UTC - 7m LOI burn complete
~2024-02-22 21:40 UTC - 10km perigee orbit burn
~2024-02-22 22:35 UTC - Powered Descent Initiation
~2024-02-22 22:50 UTC - Landing burn complete
The real timeline will of course vary, but this at least gives us a rough outline to gauge off of going forward.
-
Not to detract from their achievement, as it is very cool. But it does irk me that they are saying they have done the first LOX/LCH4 engine firing in space. It's the first one for them, yes, and the first for a spacecraft, but it follows a number of upper stage engine firings for Zhuque-2, Starship and Terran 1.
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Not to detract from their achievement, as it is very cool. But it does irk me that they are saying they have done the first LOX/LCH4 engine firing in space. It's the first one for them, yes, and the first for a spacecraft, but it follows a number of upper stage engine firings for Zhuque-2, Starship and Terran 1.
Surely they meant deep space. In the video the remarks to the team said deep space. I expect someone forgot or misunderstood the importance of the 'deep' bit in their PR copy. To give them the benefit of the doubt, anyway.
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Not to detract from their achievement, as it is very cool. But it does irk me that they are saying they have done the first LOX/LCH4 engine firing in space. It's the first one for them, yes, and the first for a spacecraft, but it follows a number of upper stage engine firings for Zhuque-2, Starship and Terran 1.
Surely they meant deep space. In the video the remarks to the team said deep space. I expect someone forgot or misunderstood the importance of the 'deep' bit in their PR copy. To give them the benefit of the doubt, anyway.
Is "deep" needed? Isn't it technically correct for "first ignition and running of a methalox engine above the Kármán line"?
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Is "deep" needed? Isn't it technically correct for "first ignition and running of a methalox engine above the Kármán line"?
I guess it depends on the staging altitude of the Zhuque-2, which I've been unable to find. I thought Starship was over the Karman line, but it seems Starship was at around 75 km and Terran 1 was at around 81 km.
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Is "deep" needed? Isn't it technically correct for "first ignition and running of a methalox engine above the Kármán line"?
I guess it depends on the staging altitude of the Zhuque-2, which I've been unable to find. I thought Starship was over the Karman line, but it seems Starship was at around 75 km and Terran 1 was at around 81 km.
ZQ-2 also uses methalox on the second stage, so it definitely fired (three times, two of which fully successfully) over the Kármán line. Of course, it never left LEO.
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ZQ-2 also uses methalox on the second stage, so it definitely fired (three times, two of which fully successfully) over the Kármán line. Of course, it never left LEO.
All the three mentioned rockets use methalox on the second stage. To count as a "firing in space", I was thinking that the engine would need to ignite over the Karman line, where if you're going by 100 km, neither Starship or Terran 1 did, and ZQ-2 may not have done.
But thinking about it, ZQ-2 should also have done a circularization burn, even if the first second stage engine start occured below 100 km.
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ZQ-2 also uses methalox on the second stage, so it definitely fired (three times, two of which fully successfully) over the Kármán line. Of course, it never left LEO.
All the three mentioned rockets use methalox on the second stage. To count as a "firing in space", I was thinking that the engine would need to ignite over the Karman line, where if you're going by 100 km, neither Starship or Terran 1 did, and ZQ-2 may not have done.
But thinking about it, ZQ-2 should also have done a circularization burn, even if the first second stage engine start occured below 100 km.
Yeah, I was thinking more in terms of "engine functioning" rather than igniting, but it's true you mentioned staging altitude, not maximum altitude achieved.
ZQ-2's staging was below 100 km too, see green plot on the bottom righthand side corner. However, it appears the verniers that failed on the first flight are the ones in charge of circularizing the orbit, so there's no circularization burn from the main TQ-12. In that sense, it looks like Odysseus might be the first methalox engine to ignite in space beyond the Kármán line after all!
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ZQ-2's staging was below 100 km too, see green plot on the bottom righthand side corner. However, it appears the verniers that failed on the first flight are the ones in charge of circularizing the orbit, so there's no circularization burn from the main TQ-12. In that sense, it looks like Odysseus might be the first methalox engine to ignite in space beyond the Kármán line after all!
The Vernier engines seem to be methalox TQ-11. So, no, it seems.
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ZQ-2's staging was below 100 km too, see green plot on the bottom righthand side corner. However, it appears the verniers that failed on the first flight are the ones in charge of circularizing the orbit, so there's no circularization burn from the main TQ-12. In that sense, it looks like Odysseus might be the first methalox engine to ignite in space beyond the Kármán line after all!
The Vernier engines seem to be methalox TQ-11. So, no, it seems.
But those are ignited with TQ-12, just stay on for longer after the main engine is shut off.
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ZQ-2's staging was below 100 km too, see green plot on the bottom righthand side corner. However, it appears the verniers that failed on the first flight are the ones in charge of circularizing the orbit, so there's no circularization burn from the main TQ-12. In that sense, it looks like Odysseus might be the first methalox engine to ignite in space beyond the Kármán line after all!
The Vernier engines seem to be methalox TQ-11. So, no, it seems.
But those are ignited with TQ-12, just stay on for longer after the main engine is shut off.
I could not find any recent mention of it but I know that the second stage originally was not supposed to be able to relight.
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First pics:
https://www.intuitivemachines.com/im-1
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Now, of course we've had all this information ever since those animations started showing up, but this is with the latest post-launch (but pre TCM) data, and broken out enough to get the preliminary timeline information. Which, to recap, is:
~2024-02-21 14:45 UTC - 7m LOI burn complete
~2024-02-22 21:40 UTC - 10km perigee orbit burn
~2024-02-22 22:35 UTC - Powered Descent Initiation
~2024-02-22 22:50 UTC - Landing burn complete
The real timeline will of course vary, but this at least gives us a rough outline to gauge off of going forward.
Just wanted to say, thanks TIFTW for the usual great analysis. Obviously we will wait for IM's official updates, but this gives me a rough sense of what part of my Thursday schedule I need to think about clearing, and hope that the landing attempt isn't going to happen in the middle of the night :)
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First pics:
https://www.intuitivemachines.com/im-1
Amazing! I just made the one of the whole disc over Australia my new desktop background.
EDIT: Also you can see a large tropical low over the Gulf of Carpentaria that formed into Tropical Cyclone Lincoln the day after the launch.
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https://twitter.com/PeterBJames/status/1759058525089566946
https://twitter.com/ThePlanetaryGuy/status/1759040696189649258
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The time when IM-1 first reaches 1 Lunar Distance from Earth, according to the JPL Horizons ephemeris:
Date__(UT)__HR:MN delta deldot
***************************************************
2024-Feb-19 00:10 3.8442005673E+05 0.3689206
Looking at distances from and speeds relative to the Moon:
2024-Feb-19 00:10 1.9651671165E+05 -0.7117400
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JPL Horizons has updated trajectory data from IM. The new timestamp in the filename is 2-17-2024-1438UTC.
All notional maneuver times mentioned upthread (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=59696.msg2568744#msg2568744) are still essentially the same in this new trajectory data. (Also, thanks for the kind words, ChrisC.)
Calculating the distance from Earth's surface at the current time gives 373,901 km, moving away now at a more stately 0.398 km / s. That distance comports pretty well with the 374,716 km range at 60 degrees elevation currently reported by Bochum Observatory (https://youtube.com/watch?v=2pPBCIpVGsM).
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IM-1 Video Update with a timelapse of all the camera shots they took just after launch.
https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1759363448884867139
Text version that was posted on the website:
Odysseus continues to be in excellent health, and flight controllers are preparing planned
trajectory correction maneuvers to prepare the lander for lunar orbit insertion.
Since the IM-1 Mission launched on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, flight controllers on the Company’s
red, white, and blue teams have been learning more about the lander and how to efficiently fly
the mission to return the United States to the surface of the Moon.
February 17th, Intuitive Machines published the first IM-1 Mission images, capturing Earth in
the background as Odysseus drifted away toward the Moon.
Payload Integration Managers programmed the lander’s wide and narrow field of view
cameras to take five quick images every five minutes for two hours, starting 100 seconds after
separating from SpaceX’s second stage. Out of all the images collected, Intuitive Machines
chose to show humanity’s place in the universe with four wonderful images we hope to inspire
the next generation of risk-takers.
Looking forward, Intuitive Machines expects to execute lunar orbit insertion on February
21st, with a lunar landing opportunity on the afternoon of the 22nd. We intend to stream the
landing on the Intuitive Machines IM-1 Mission web page and announce the exact landing time
tomorrow as Columbia Sportswear takes over the exterior of Sphere in Las Vegas, showcasing
the role Omni-Heat Infinity technology is playing in the IM-1 Mission.
Again, Odysseus continues to be in excellent health, and flight controllers are preparing
planned trajectory correction maneuvers to prepare the lander for lunar orbit insertion. We
expect to continue to provide mission updates at least once a day on X and the IM-1 Mission
webpage.
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It would be great if someone could post a slowed down video of the photo sequence they show in the Twitter video.
-
Also on youtube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CyG5WtD8Gjk
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Also on youtube: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CyG5WtD8Gjk
That's better you can step frame by frame with '<' and '>' on YouTube so I can now get a better look at the photos. Looks like the sequence of 5 frames are taken with different exposure duration. Its interesting just how quickly the Earth is getting smaller.
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That's better you can step frame by frame with '<' and '>' on YouTube so I can now get a better look at the photos. Looks like the sequence of 5 frames are taken with different exposure duration. Its interesting just how quickly the Earth is getting smaller.
nzguy and cryogenicvalve,
I downloaded and slowed down (90%) the part where the camera pictures are displayed. There are quite a few images from the three different views. The Slow-Motion part starts at 1:00 in the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0I2fFvqhGQ
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https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1759363454756852044
Looking forward, Intuitive Machines expects to execute lunar orbit insertion on February 21st, with a lunar landing opportunity on the afternoon of the 22nd. We intend to stream the landing on the Intuitive Machines IM-1 Mission web page and announce the exact landing time tomorrow as Columbia Sportswear takes over the exterior of Sphere in Las Vegas, showcasing the role Omni-Heat Infinity technology is playing in the IM-1 Mission. 4/5
3:45 PM · Feb 18, 2024
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UhldAqwnBM
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nzguy and cryogenicvalve,
I downloaded and slowed down (90%) the part where the camera pictures are displayed. There are quite a few images from the three different views. The Slow-Motion part starts at 1:00 in the video.
Thanks for that!
Watching it again you can definitely sense the rotation they mentioned on the long axis before they fixed the star tracker.
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As sdsds mentioned coming up a few posts ago, IM-1 is now past the lunar distance.
For anybody interested, I've thrown together a quick script (https://www.theinternetftw.com/im1viz/) to show the current-ish location of IM-1 by basically playing back that orbit animation seen upthread in real time. Right now it updates every two hours.
The Astronomy Live video calculates orbital parameters for IM-1 that are very different from what Horizons shows, but I'm currently assuming those discrepancies are due to the small number of data points used, as the Bochum Observatory range data continues to match Horizons closely.
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JPL Horizons has been updated with new data.
The new filename is interesting: IM1-DRM7.2.5_TCM1-LOI_100x100_withKXOD3
The (I assume outdated) incorrect parking orbit information in the background section has been fixed. Always a good thing.
The trajectory background details also had this new information:
SPACECRAFT TRAJECTORY:
Post-launch trajectory from Lunar Node-1 experiment on-board IM-1 via DSN/SPS
The notional maneuver times mentioned upthread (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=59696.msg2568744#msg2568744) moved a bit but are approximately the same.
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We intend to stream the landing on the Intuitive Machines IM-1 Mission web page and announce the exact landing time tomorrow [Monday Feb 19th] as Columbia Sportswear takes over the exterior of Sphere in Las Vegas, showcasing the role Omni-Heat Infinity technology is playing in the IM-1 Mission.
There's been no such announcement from IM yet, so I wonder if they're waiting for nightfall for Columbia to take over the Sphere and then announcing. Here's a live camera I found (https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ew8BCgvGMMU) -- nothing yet.
-
https://www.intuitivemachines.com/_files/ugd/7c27f7_ef85f351ed5f44f19e312b145fb671b8.pdf
Flight controllers received and analyzed data from the February 16th engine Commissioning
Maneuver (CM). Data from the 21-second full-thrust mainstage engine CM confirmed Odysseus
hit its 21 m/s target with approximately 0.8 m/s accuracy.
[...]
-
This post includes a GIF
https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1759725847575937330
Flight controllers received and analyzed data from the February 16th engine Commissioning Maneuver (CM). Data from the 21-second full-thrust mainstage engine CM confirmed Odysseus hit its 21 m/s target with approximately 0.8 m/s accuracy. The GIF below was created from images taken while the lander maneuvered to CM burn attitude. 🧵(19FEB2024 1745 CST) 1/5
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There's a bit more in the pdf version. The highlights: TCM1 was completed yesterday, the text suggests only one more TCM is required, and "flight controllers completed all NASA and commercial transit payload operations this morning."
(Edit: I tried to attach the gif mentioned above, but the forum software didn't like it, so it's attached as an mp4 instead. Which also made the file 20x smaller, so, bonus.)
Flight controllers received and analyzed data from the February 16th engine Commissioning
Maneuver (CM). Data from the 21-second full-thrust mainstage engine CM confirmed Odysseus
hit its 21 m/s target with approximately 0.8 m/s accuracy. The GIF below was created from
images taken while the lander maneuvered to CM burn attitude. Propulsion mixture ratios,
mass flow rate, and temperature were as predicted. Overall, Intuitive Machines characterizes
the execution of the CM as nominal and per expectations.
On February 18th, flight controllers commanded the lander’s first planned trajectory correction
maneuver, igniting the lander’s engine for the second time, and are planning the anticipated
final required maneuver before Odysseus’ largest challenge to date, lunar orbit insertion,
which is expected on Wednesday, February 21st.
In addition, flight controllers completed all NASA and commercial transit payload operations
this morning.
Odysseus continues to be in excellent health, and flight controllers are analyzing and managing
the lander’s thermal conditioning for critical systems and payloads with a combination of
heater power and attitude control to maximize efficiency.
We expect to continue to provide mission updates at least once a day on X and the IM-1 Mission
web page, where we intend to host a live stream for landing coverage.
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There's a bit more in the pdf version. The highlights: TCM1 was completed yesterday, the text suggests only one more TCM is required, and "flight controllers completed all NASA and commercial transit payload operations this morning."
(Edit: I tried to attach the gif mentioned above, but the forum software didn't like it, so it's attached as an mp4 instead. Which also made the file 20x smaller, so, bonus.)
Thanks for the info theinternetftw. It's getting exciting.
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More twiddling with Horizons data shows when IM-1 enters the lunar sphere-of-influence (using a radius of 6.43E+04 km):
Date__(UT)__HR:MN delta deldot
***************************************************
2024-Feb-20 21:00 6.5628201302E+04 -0.8982841
2024-Feb-20 21:30 6.4009075595E+04 -0.9008848
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https://twitter.com/int_machines/status/1759775095889756420
The IM-1 mission to land on the Moon has triumphed over numerous challenges, showcasing exceptional resilience, innovation, and teamwork.
Intuitive Machines expects to land on the Moon at 1649 CST on Thursday, February 22nd.
=22:49 UTC
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We intend to stream the landing on the Intuitive Machines IM-1 Mission web page and announce the exact landing time tomorrow [Monday Feb 19th] as Columbia Sportswear takes over the exterior of Sphere in Las Vegas, showcasing the role Omni-Heat Infinity technology is playing in the IM-1 Mission.
There's been no such announcement from IM yet, so I wonder if they're waiting for nightfall for Columbia to take over the Sphere and then announcing. Here's a live camera I found (https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ew8BCgvGMMU) -- nothing yet.
Right at the top of the hour on the live stream the Columbia/IM-1 ad played. No idea how to share a link to a specific time on live streams so you just need to seek back.
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This is probably written somewhere on this forum but I was wondering how this lander is keeping the propellant cold? Or is it not that cold and at super high pressure? Is there some information on how they're managing prop temp and pressure?
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This is probably written somewhere on this forum but I was wondering how this lander is keeping the propellant cold? Or is it not that cold and at super high pressure? Is there some information on how they're managing prop temp and pressure?
Presume they're tolerating boil-off having loaded excess LCH4 for the purpose.
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This is probably written somewhere on this forum but I was wondering how this lander is keeping the propellant cold? Or is it not that cold and at super high pressure? Is there some information on how they're managing prop temp and pressure?
Presume they're tolerating boil-off having loaded excess LCH4 for the purpose.
Liquid oxygen is colder than liquid methane so they're probably tolerating some liquid oxygen boil-off too.
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Do we have a time and distance for the apogee? I haven't noticed it but might have missed it.
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Nice 3D visualization of the trajectory to immediately understand the S/C is not just loitering at apogee of its VHEO approximately in front of the Moon, waiting for it to pass by - but actually approaching from below! I guess this should be obvious given the target inclination of 27º (vs 5º for the Moon's), but I didn't appreciate it until now.
https://twitter.com/AstrogatorWest/status/1759693889206665627
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We intend to stream the landing on the Intuitive Machines IM-1 Mission web page and announce the exact landing time tomorrow [Monday Feb 19th] as Columbia Sportswear takes over the exterior of Sphere in Las Vegas, showcasing the role Omni-Heat Infinity technology is playing in the IM-1 Mission.
There's been no such announcement from IM yet, so I wonder if they're waiting for nightfall for Columbia to take over the Sphere and then announcing. Here's a live camera I found (https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ew8BCgvGMMU) -- nothing yet.
Columbia did run their promo on the Sphere last night. As I type this, you can see it at the beginning of the 12-hour buffer of the live stream above. It was a 1m25s piece that run (interspersed with other material) for about three hours, so maybe someone here can grab it before it expires out at ~1800 UTC. It contained imagery of the lander and the moon's surface.
EDIT: thanks Tony. Does anyone here have screen recording capability?
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We intend to stream the landing on the Intuitive Machines IM-1 Mission web page and announce the exact landing time tomorrow [Monday Feb 19th] as Columbia Sportswear takes over the exterior of Sphere in Las Vegas, showcasing the role Omni-Heat Infinity technology is playing in the IM-1 Mission.
There's been no such announcement from IM yet, so I wonder if they're waiting for nightfall for Columbia to take over the Sphere and then announcing. Here's a live camera I found (https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ew8BCgvGMMU) -- nothing yet.
Columbia did run their promo on the Sphere last night. As I type this, you can see it at the beginning of the 12-hour buffer of the live stream above. It was a 1m25s piece that run (interspersed with other material) for about three hours, so maybe someone here can grab it before it expires out at ~1800 UTC. It contained imagery of the lander and the moon's surface.
I only saw the 30s version, as for the live stream I can't download the current live stream unless the video is stopped and released.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwCI_AWFlzw
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Do we have a time and distance for the apogee? I haven't noticed it but might have missed it.
According to JPL Horizons, apogee was 18:02UTC at 404,720 km from Earth's surface.
(Edit: I'll add the closest pic to that (which is also the closest one to now) from the upthread viz.)
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Well, forget that last post.
Horizons just updated. Almost all trajectory data filenames have changed:
File name Begins (TDB) Ends (TDB)
---------------------------------------- ----------------- -----------------
LND1_n229-Feb15.v2 2024-Feb-15 06:06 2024-Feb-15 19:53
IM1-Post_CM_Trajectory_24011700700CST 2024-Feb-15 19:53 2024-Feb-17 12:30
IM1-DRM7.2.5_TCM1-reconstruct_with_BE3D 2024-Feb-17 12:30 2024-Feb-20 15:00
IM1_TCM3_LOI_KXODvec5-F8E9-0200pmTIG 2024-Feb-20 15:00 2024-Feb-22 22:49
I'm guessing the Lunar Node 1 navigation beacon readings mentioned earlier are just the first file now.
The previous press release update seemed to suggest they only needed two TCMs, but based on the last filename, they may have still called the last one TCM3. Or they may have done / be planning three. We'll see.
When they released a Horizons update with TCM1 in the filename, TCM1 was already done. So "TCM3" (which may be the last of two) could already be complete.
That may well be the case, because the apogee time and distance changed significantly with this update. The new data says it happened at 17:52 UTC, at 403,880 km above Earth's surface.
Horizons data currently has LOI burn completion time at 14:42 UTC on the 21st.
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This is a semi-official confirmation from Tim Crain.
https://twitter.com/CrainTim/status/1760040920278262015
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We intend to stream the landing on the Intuitive Machines IM-1 Mission web page and announce the exact landing time tomorrow [Monday Feb 19th] as Columbia Sportswear takes over the exterior of Sphere in Las Vegas, showcasing the role Omni-Heat Infinity technology is playing in the IM-1 Mission.
There's been no such announcement from IM yet, so I wonder if they're waiting for nightfall for Columbia to take over the Sphere and then announcing. Here's a live camera I found (https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ew8BCgvGMMU) -- nothing yet.
Columbia did run their promo on the Sphere last night. As I type this, you can see it at the beginning of the 12-hour buffer of the live stream above. It was a 1m25s piece that run (interspersed with other material) for about three hours, so maybe someone here can grab it before it expires out at ~1800 UTC. It contained imagery of the lander and the moon's surface.
EDIT: thanks Tony. Does anyone here have screen recording capability?
Chris C. I have a very good one, but it will tie up my PC due to recording in real-time, and I can't afford that, except overnight while I sleep.
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EDIT: thanks Tony. Does anyone here have screen recording capability?
Chris C. I have a very good one, but it will tie up my PC due to recording in real-time, and I can't afford that, except overnight while I sleep.
Oh, it would have been for only 90 seconds while you played that part that was looping late last night. Anyway, it's too late now, and it wasn't that important, just cool to see the whole thing that Columbia produced for this event. Back to waiting for IM announcement of timing ...
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For the record, current notional timing in Horizons:
~2024-02-21 14:35 UTC - LOI burn start
~2024-02-21 14:42 UTC - LOI burn completion
~2024-02-22 21:35 UTC - 10 km perigee burn
~2024-02-22 22:35 UTC - Powered Descent Initiation
2024-02-22 22:49 UTC - Announced Landing Time (also now where all Horizons data ends)
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NASA Sets Coverage of First US Uncrewed Commercial Moon Landing
FEB 20, 2024
MEDIA ADVISORY M24-026
Intuitive Machines is targeting Thursday, Feb. 22, for the landing of their Odysseus lunar lander on the surface of the Moon as part of NASA’s CLPS initiative and Artemis campaign.
Credits: Intuitive Machines
As part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) initiative and Artemis campaign, Intuitive Machines is targeting no earlier than 5:49 p.m. EST Thursday, Feb. 22, to land their Odysseus lunar lander near Malapert A in the South Pole region of the Moon.
Live landing coverage will air on NASA+, NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website. NASA TV can be streamed on a variety of platforms, including social media. Coverage will include live streaming and blog updates beginning 4:15 p.m., as the landing milestones occur. Upon successful landing, Intuitive Machines and NASA will host a news conference to discuss the mission and science opportunities that lie ahead as the company begins lunar surface operations.
In May 2019, the agency awarded a task order for scientific payload delivery to Intuitive Machines. Odysseus launched at 1:05 a.m., Feb. 15, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA is working with several U.S. companies to deliver science and technology to the lunar surface through the agency’s CLPS initiative. This pool of companies may bid on task orders for end-to-end delivery services, which includes payload integration and operations, launching from Earth, and landing on the surface of the Moon. NASA’s CLPS contracts are indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contracts with a cumulative maximum contract value of $2.6 billion through 2028.
Through the Artemis campaign, commercial robotic deliveries will perform science experiments, test technologies, and demonstrate capabilities to help NASA explore the Moon in advance of Artemis Generation astronaut missions to the lunar surface, and ultimately crewed missions to Mars.
Watch, engage on social media
Let people know you’re following the mission on X, Facebook, and Instagram by using the hashtag #Artemis. You can also stay connected by following and tagging these accounts:
X: @NASA, @NASA_Johnson, @NASAArtemis, @NASAMoon
Facebook: NASA, NASAJohnsonSpaceCenter, NASAArtemis
Instagram: @NASA, @NASAJohnson, @NASAArtemis
For more information about the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, see:
https://www.nasa.gov/clps
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For the record, current notional timing in Horizons:
~2024-02-21 14:35 UTC - LOI burn start
~2024-02-21 14:42 UTC - LOI burn completion
~2024-02-22 21:35 UTC - 10 km perigee burn
~2024-02-22 22:35 UTC - Powered Descent Initiation
2024-02-22 22:49 UTC - Announced Landing Time (also now where all Horizons data ends)
Are they really reusing Apollo terms?
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For the record, current notional timing in Horizons:
~2024-02-21 14:35 UTC - LOI burn start
~2024-02-21 14:42 UTC - LOI burn completion
~2024-02-22 21:35 UTC - 10 km perigee burn
~2024-02-22 22:35 UTC - Powered Descent Initiation
2024-02-22 22:49 UTC - Announced Landing Time (also now where all Horizons data ends)
Are they really reusing Apollo terms?
I like it. Why reinvent the wheel?
It's not like when someone says "Jet fighter." when describing a F-15 or something. We haven't had piston fighters since the Korean War.
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For the record, current notional timing in Horizons:
~2024-02-21 14:35 UTC - LOI burn start
~2024-02-21 14:42 UTC - LOI burn completion
~2024-02-22 21:35 UTC - 10 km perigee burn
~2024-02-22 22:35 UTC - Powered Descent Initiation
2024-02-22 22:49 UTC - Announced Landing Time (also now where all Horizons data ends)
Are they really reusing Apollo terms?
I like it. Why reinvent the wheel?
There were other landers before and after.
More than likely they don't apply.
It is really going into lunar orbit? If so, there then needs to be a DOI if we are not inventing the wheel.
TLI was not used for this mission.
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They are indeed using the PDI and DOI terms for this landing:
https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1756347324685602830
https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1755962315491475737
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Website update:
Intuitive Machines flight controllers commanded the IM-1 mission’s second planned Trajectory Correction Maneuver (TCM) with enough precision to eliminate the need for the initially planned third TCM engine firing. Today’s TCM fired at 1400 CST for 8 seconds, and it is the final maneuver before Odysseus’ largest challenge to date, Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI), scheduled for February 21, 2024.
Odysseus continues to be in excellent health and is approximately 68,000 km from the Moon. Over the next several hours, flight controllers will continue to analyze the flight data ahead of LOI.
We expect to continue to provide mission updates at least once a day on X and the IM-1 Mission web page, where we intend to host a live stream for landing coverage.
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https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1760061865122582632
Today’s TCM fired at 1400 CST for 8 seconds, and it is the final maneuver before Odysseus’ largest challenge to date, Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI), scheduled for February 21, 2024.
Odysseus continues to be in excellent health and is approximately 68,000 km from the Moon. Over the next several hours, flight controllers will continue to analyze the flight data ahead of LOI. 2/3
2:00 PM · Feb 20, 2024
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Hopefully we get some more photos during LOI since they have to flip the lander around so might catch the moon in the camera?
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https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1760180109925929154
IM-1 is now inside the lunar gravitational sphere of influence and heading towards a 100 km perilune at 1440 UTC 9:50 PM · Feb 20, 2024
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I remember that being called the "Equigravisphere" back in the Apollo days, don't see it much these days.
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https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1760181561561878909
I estimate the lunar orbit insertion burn needs a delta-V of 600 m/s
9:56 PM · Feb 20, 2024
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https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1760182646833893449
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My graphical interface for Horizons data (https://win98.altervista.org/space/exploration/3d/space-explorer-tracker.html?orbiter=-229¢er=@301&start=2024-02-18%2013:00&stop=2024-02-22%2022:49&step=100)
Last parameter in the url specifies the number of divisions of the time interval specified by dates; take into account that Horizons does not accept less than 0.5 seconds per each division.
Unfortunately I can't yet understand why plotly plots so slowly so few data, so I suggest not to go above 300 samples.
Plots are interactive, you can zoom and pan.
In the 3d plot, target is at center. I was not yet able to add a second body and trajectory in same plot...
This is another page, but harder to use: it does not support parameters in url, you must enter them manually, but you can see also raw output, and decide which column to plot.
http://win98.altervista.org/space/exploration/NHUGUI.html
IM-1 has id -229, moon is @301, moon radius is 1737 (correction factor for plot).
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zFp9LW78k0
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From 100km orbit to powered descent. (https://win98.altervista.org/space/exploration/3d/space-explorer-tracker.html?orbiter=-229¢er=@301&start=2024-02-22%2019:20&stop=2024-02-22%2022:49&step=100)
From hovering to final descent
(https://win98.altervista.org/space/exploration/3d/space-explorer-tracker.html?orbiter=-229¢er=@301&start=2024-02-22%2022:28&stop=2024-02-22%2022:50&step=100)
Final descent (https://win98.altervista.org/space/exploration/3d/space-explorer-tracker.html?orbiter=-229¢er=@301&start=2024-02-22%2022:48&stop=2024-02-22%2022:50&step=100) (without correction factor of 1.7 km from Moon center. Touch down not visible?!?)
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https://twitter.com/InfographicTony/status/1760302403902148860
In the next day or so, Intuitive Machines’ lunar lander will be touching down on the South Pole of the moon. It’s been more than 50 years since the U.S has landed anything on its surface. Join me in wishing all those involved the greatest of luck and Godspeed, I’ll be updating this infographic on the weekend.
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Apologies if I missed this information above.
About what time today is the LOI burn expected?
TIA.
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Apologies if I missed this information above. About what time today is the LOI burn expected?
Right around the moment you posted that.
For the record, current notional timing in Horizons:
~2024-02-21 14:35 UTC - LOI burn start
~2024-02-21 14:42 UTC - LOI burn completion
~2024-02-22 21:35 UTC - 10 km perigee burn
~2024-02-22 22:35 UTC - Powered Descent Initiation
2024-02-22 22:49 UTC - Announced Landing Time (also now where all Horizons data ends)
Perilune happens on the "dark" side of the moon, so no comms, but right about now the spacecraft will be coming back into view and then IM will know what happened. So we can expect / hope for an update shortly.
I've been checking a couple TwiX feeds (e.g. Scott Tilley) but haven't seen anyone looking for the signal this morning.
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LOI success confirmed:
https://www.intuitivemachines.com/im-1
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Odysseus completed its scheduled 408-second main engine lunar orbit insertion burn and is currently in a 92 km circular lunar orbit. Initial data indicates the 800 m/s burn was completed within 2 m/s accuracy. 🧵1/4 (21FEB2024 0920 CST)
https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1760323743270756500
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https://twitter.com/amsatdl/status/1760315481502748962
Looks like we saw a successful LOI for #IM1 lunar lander @Int_Machines.
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It's such a historic moment... methalox engine, late load, direct transfer to the Moon, then lunar orbit insertion. It's just the beginning of many missions that will use cryos beyond LEO.
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For the record, current notional timing in Horizons:
~2024-02-21 14:35 UTC - LOI burn start
~2024-02-21 14:42 UTC - LOI burn completion
~2024-02-22 21:35 UTC - 10 km perigee burn
~2024-02-22 22:35 UTC - Powered Descent Initiation
2024-02-22 22:49 UTC - Announced Landing Time (also now where all Horizons data ends)
Are they really reusing Apollo terms?
Oh yeah, smarty pants! What color should we make that "wheel"?
It's neat that you connected these to terminology used in Apollo.
Of course, Intitive Machines is making a point of echoing Apollo just as NASA is doing for "#Artemis".
However, can you point out any of those terms that are incorrect?
Who really cares if there are other possibilities?
This is exciting and going well.
edit: REALLY well with a successful LOI!
(...out of comms, like Apollo ;) )
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It's such a historic moment... methalox engine, late load, direct transfer to the Moon, then lunar orbit insertion. It's just the beginning of many missions that will use cryos beyond LEO.
I guess Intuitive Machines just broke the record for distance from Earth that a liquid oxygen rocket engine has been used by an order of magnitude (was GEO plus a little for graveyard orbits, now lunar distance plus a little)? And they also broke the record for longest time that a liquid oxygen stage has been in space before use? And first liquid oxygen stage used in orbit of an object other than Earth? And first orbit of an object other than Earth by a spacecraft owned by a non-government? [Edit: people pointed out two counter-examples to the last sentence. It may be fixed if "non-government" is replaced with "American non-government entity".]
It's a little surprising that these records were broken by a minor company with a budget an order of magnitude smaller than some other space programs. The major space players have talked about breaking these records for decades (e.g. ULA's CisLunar and ACES) but never walked the walk.
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First, a quick aside:
I guess Intuitive Machines just broke the record for distance from Earth that a liquid oxygen rocket engine has been used by an order of magnitude (was GEO plus a little for graveyard orbits, now lunar distance plus a little)? And they also broke the record for longest time that a liquid oxygen stage has been in space before use? And first liquid oxygen stage used in orbit of an object other than Earth? And first orbit of an object other than Earth by a spacecraft owned by a non-government?
It's a little surprising that these records were broken by a minor company with a budget an order of magnitude smaller than some other space programs. The major space players have talked about breaking these records for decades (e.g. ULA's CisLunar and ACES) but never walked the walk.
The Hakuto-R lander made by the Japanese company ispace entered lunar orbit last year. Still definitely a minor company.
Now the main post: here's the entire LOI update from the website for posterity, as well as the photo they posted there of their mission control just after the burn:
Odysseus completed its scheduled 408-second main engine lunar orbit insertion burn and is currently in a 92 km circular lunar orbit. Initial data indicates the 800 m/s burn was completed within 2 m/s accuracy.
After traveling over 1,000,000 km, Odysseus is now closer to the Moon than the end-to-end distance driving across Space City, Houston, TX.
Over the next day, while the lander remains in lunar orbit, flight controllers will analyze the complete flight data and transmit imagery of the Moon.
Odysseus continues to be in excellent health. We expect to continue to provide mission updates at least once a day on X and the IM-1 Mission web page, where we intend to host a live stream for landing coverage.
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First, a quick aside:
I guess Intuitive Machines just broke the record for distance from Earth that a liquid oxygen rocket engine has been used by an order of magnitude -----
The Hakuto-R lander made by the Japanese company ispace entered lunar orbit last year. Still definitely a minor company.
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And don't forget Beresheet. But did either of them use LOX?
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Odysseus completed its scheduled 408-second main engine lunar orbit insertion burn and is currently in a 92 km circular lunar orbit. Initial data indicates the 800 m/s burn was completed within 2 m/s accuracy. 🧵1/4 (21FEB2024 0920 CST)
Question - why is the insertion burn so far off? Presumably the inertial nav system is keeping track of the burn, and should be much more accurate than a part in 400. Also it's a 400 second burn, so the error is (very roughly) about 1 second of full thrust. A wild guess - maybe the engine thrust was slightly low, and the burn ran into the backup time limits (presumably the desired time plus and minus a little). This is completely unfounded speculation,
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800 m/s intended, and it's 'within' 2 m/s out. Is that 'so far off'? Sounds pretty good to me. It certainly isn't Luna 25 off!
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Odysseus completed its scheduled 408-second main engine lunar orbit insertion burn and is currently in a 92 km circular lunar orbit. Initial data indicates the 800 m/s burn was completed within 2 m/s accuracy. 🧵1/4 (21FEB2024 0920 CST)
Question - why is the insertion burn so far off? Presumably the inertial nav system is keeping track of the burn, and should be much more accurate than a part in 400. Also it's a 400 second burn, so the error is (very roughly) about 1 second of full thrust. A wild guess - maybe the engine thrust was slightly low, and the burn ran into the backup time limits (presumably the desired time plus and minus a little). This is completely unfounded speculation,
a. 0.25% accuracy is not too bad.
b. I bet the engine tail-off thrust hasn't been accurately modeled.
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And don't forget Beresheet. But did either of them use LOX?
I actually did forget Beresheet, apologies. However it was co-developed with Israel Aerospace Industries, which is government owned. This complicates satisfying the record described: 'first orbit of an object other than Earth by a spacecraft owned by a non-government'. Though it may well be non-goverment owned, but government co-developed.
Both Beresheet and Hakuto-R used hypergolic propellants.
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b. I bet the engine tail-off thrust hasn't been accurately modeled.
Yeah, the fact that the 400s LOI burn error was just 2.5x larger than error from a TCM-1 burn that was like 20x shorter suggests that the errors are just shutdown transients. And it's little surprise that a chemical propulsion system flying for the first time doesn't have perfect agreement between with IM's models just yet.
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I actually did forget Beresheet, apologies. However it was co-developed with Israel Aerospace Industries, which is government owned. This complicates satisfying the record described: 'first orbit of an object other than Earth by a spacecraft owned by a non-government'. Though it may well be non-goverment owned, but government co-developed.
Both Beresheet and Hakuto-R used hypergolic propellants.
OK so the fourth of the four records (the one involving non-government) that I proposed IM broke was wrong. The first three proposed records (the ones involving liquid oxygen) still look good. It looks like Beresheet was Israeli and Hakuto-R was Japanese so maybe the fourth record would become valid if "non-government" was replaced with "American non-government entity"?
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I actually did forget Beresheet, apologies. However it was co-developed with Israel Aerospace Industries, which is government owned. This complicates satisfying the record described: 'first orbit of an object other than Earth by a spacecraft owned by a non-government'. Though it may well be non-goverment owned, but government co-developed.
Both Beresheet and Hakuto-R used hypergolic propellants.
OK so the fourth of the four records (the one involving non-government) that I proposed IM broke was wrong. The first three proposed records (the ones involving liquid oxygen) still look good. It looks like Beresheet was Israeli and Hakuto-R was Japanese so maybe the fourth record would become valid if "non-government" was replaced with "American non-government entity"?
Keep twisting that pretzel.
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First lunar lander made by more than 5 people wearing green underwear at the same time!
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First... oh, never mind. Here's a pic from orbit:
https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1760426223073734704 (https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1760426223073734704)
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First... oh, never mind. Here's a pic from orbit:
Yay! Looks like everything is going well so far.
The placeholder for the NASA landing livestream is now up on YouTube too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg2ffigGcYM
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First... oh, never mind. Here's a pic from orbit:
https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1760426223073734704 (https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1760426223073734704)
Here's the image, in case Twitter ever goes the way of MySpace.
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https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1760442834329473383
Flight controllers analyzed the post-Lunar Orbit Insertion engine burn data and updated the anticipated flight maneuver timing, including an expected 1630 CST landing opportunity on Thursday. The landing opportunity will be Odysseus’ hardest challenge yet. The lander continues to be in excellent health, orbiting approximately 92 km above the lunar surface.
(21FEB2024 1645 CST)
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Can someone convert those times to UTC?
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For future reference, CST is UTC-6. So the new landing time is 22:30 UTC, and everything kicks off at 21:17.
2nd orbit pic. Description:
Odysseus’ Terrain Relative Navigation camera captured this image of the Bel’kovich K crater in the Moon’s northern equatorial highlands.
It has an approximate 50 km diameter crater with mountains in the center, made when the crater was formed.
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For future reference, CST is UTC-6. So the new landing time is 22:30 UTC, and everything kicks off at 21:17.
Thanks! I wish NASA would give the UTC times or the adjustment, as I find the many USA time zones confusing. Now I know what time in the morning to expect the landing here in Canberra.
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Quote from: nzguy on Today at 05:10 pm
Can someone convert those times to UTC?
CST = UTC - 6
15:17 CST = 21:17 UTC = 4:17 PM EST, 1:17 PST Descent Orbit Insertion
16:18 CST = 22:18 UTC = 5:18 PM EST, 2:18 PST Powered Descent Initiation
16:30 CST = 22:30 UTC = 5:30 PM EST, 2:30 PST Landed
This puts it ~18 min earlier than the prelinimary timing
~2024-02-22 21:35 UTC - 10 km perigee burn
~2024-02-22 22:35 UTC - Powered Descent Initiation
2024-02-22 22:49 UTC - Announced Landing Time
But can anyone else convert that poster into a comprehensible flight path?
At 15:17 IM-1 starts to brake from the ~100 km circular orbit to one with a perigee at 10 km
The chart puts the start of the Terrain Relative Navigation at the same time, when it's still at 100 km altitude.
61 minutes later is Powered Descent Initiation.
10 minutes later IM-1 does a Pitch Over "with main engine".
When do they shed the orbital velocity, in those 10 minutes?
At the same time IM-1 starts Hazard Detection and Avoidance, but from what altitude?
Two minutes later, it lands (at 1 m/s).
edit: Oops! AM/PM copy/paste Thanks Eer!
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https://twitter.com/this_is_tckb/status/1760324728965796069
Now that LOI is finished: I've done full and final landing simulation of @Int_Machines #IM1 that will occur tomorrow ~ 22.02.2024 22.48 UTC . Here are the major events (pay close attention to the change velocity vector at the end!) 1/n
https://youtu.be/Vt1bqs9yC8E
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https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/as-companies-shoot-at-the-moon-nasas-tolerance-of-failure-is-tested/
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When do they shed the orbital velocity, in those 10 minutes?
At the same time IM-1 starts Hazard Detection and Avoidance, but from what altitude?
Two minutes later, it lands (at 1 m/s).
From the JPL Horizons background material:
The Nova-C class main engine is designed to burn continuously throughout the
powered descent. The lander will be slowed by 1,800 meters per second, then
pitched over to assume landing attitude when 30 meters above the lunar
surface, before bringing the craft to a soft landing.
So 1,800 m/s is shed before pitch over, which happens at 30m altitude.
Horizons also has a vertical velocity 2 minutes before landing of ~27 m/s and 1 minute before landing of ~1.8 m/s.
Edit: the data is outdated but you can see the shape of things in the graphs attached to a previous post (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=59696.msg2568744#msg2568744).
Edit2: spacexplorer's post using their visualizer (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=59696.msg2569758#msg2569758) takes a bit of time to run, but uses the currently live Horizons data (note that data is still not updated to this latest published timeline, and when it is, the visualizations linked in that post will be centered on the wrong time and might not show anything.).
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Quick GIF comparing the camera image from the beginning of the mission in the vicinity of the Earth to the latest image after LOI today.
Everything seems the same on the lander except for a thin long white thing on the left hand side. Is it extending from one of the payloads?
Any guess what this could be?
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Quote from: nzguy on Today at 05:10 pm
Can someone convert those times to UTC?
CST = UTC - 6
15:17 CST = 21:17 UTC = 4:17 PM EST, 1:17 PST Descent Orbit Insertion
16:18 CST = 22:18 UTC = 5:18 PM EST, 2:18 PST Powered Descent Initiation
16:30 CST = 22:30 UTC = 5:30 PM EST, 2:30 PST Landed
This puts it ~18 min earlier than the prelinimary timing
~2024-02-22 21:35 UTC - 10 km perigee burn
~2024-02-22 22:35 UTC - Powered Descent Initiation
2024-02-22 22:49 UTC - Announced Landing Time
But Can anyone else convert that poster into a comprehensible flight path?
At 15:17 IM-1 starts to brake from the ~100 km circular orbit to one with a perigee at 10 km
The chart puts the start of the Terrain Relative Navigation at the same time, when it's still at 100 km altitude.
61 minutes later is Powered Descent Initiation.
10 minutes later IM-1 does a Pitch Over "with main engine".
When do they shed the orbital velocity, in those 10 minutes?
At the same time IM-1 starts Hazard Detection and Avoidance, but from what altitude?
Two minutes later, it lands (at 1 m/s).
Edit - the AM EST times should be PM EST... and all the PST times are PM, as well.
Edit2 - the strike-through I tried to use doesn't render correctly on some apps, so deleted the struck-through AMs
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In regards to the long use of cryogenic propellants, I think the previous record may have been Cosmos 382-(Soyuz 7K-L1E) launched on December 2 1970 on a Block-D stage, which was ignited several times over 5 days, and is still in a 5208 x 2461 km orbit with a modified Zond Soyuz capsule still attached.
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In regards to the long use of cryogenic propellants, I think the previous record may have been Cosmos 382-(Soyuz 7K-L1E) launched on December 2 1970 on a Block-D stage, which was ignited several times over 5 days, and is still in a 5208 x 2461 km orbit with a modified Zond Soyuz capsule still attached.
Was it a hydrolox combo or something else used? Hydrogen is the hardest to contain so I usually presume oxygen and something else.
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In regards to the long use of cryogenic propellants, I think the previous record may have been Cosmos 382-(Soyuz 7K-L1E) launched on December 2 1970 on a Block-D stage, which was ignited several times over 5 days, and is still in a 5208 x 2461 km orbit with a modified Zond Soyuz capsule still attached.
Was it a hydrolox combo or something else used? Hydrogen is the hardest to contain so I usually presume oxygen and something else.
RP-1/LOX for the Blok-D
The mission was meant to simulate lunar orbit insertion and descent.
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In regards to the long use of cryogenic propellants, I think the previous record may have been Cosmos 382-(Soyuz 7K-L1E) launched on December 2 1970 on a Block-D stage, which was ignited several times over 5 days ...
RP-1/LOX for the Blok-D...
That would be part-cryogenic propellant (the LOX) as opposed to fully cryogenic (as with methalox). If you wanted to split hairs, that is. :)
But, regardless of the exact number and nature of records set, the use of cryogenic propellants on lunar missions is significant because of the potential benefits to future missions of the much higher performance of cryogenic over hypergolic propellants.
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Can someone convert those times to UTC?
just write "16:30 cst in gmt" in google, the "in" operator is powerful!
Anyway in 2024 still using the "tax payer timezone" in space missions is very dumb.
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In regards to the long use of cryogenic propellants, I think the previous record may have been Cosmos 382-(Soyuz 7K-L1E) launched on December 2 1970 on a Block-D stage, which was ignited several times over 5 days, and is still in a 5208 x 2461 km orbit with a modified Zond Soyuz capsule still attached.
Was it a hydrolox combo or something else used? Hydrogen is the hardest to contain so I usually presume oxygen and something else.
RP-1/LOX for the Blok-D
The mission was meant to simulate lunar orbit insertion and descent.
Beat me to it. Between 1969 and 1976 Block D delivered a good number of Soviet lunar probes to the Moon: Babakin OKB-301's Ye-8 series, which featured orbiters, Lunokhods, and sample scoopers. Block D reliability however was dismal and it also lost a large number of spacecraft.
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Anyway in 2024 still using the "tax payer timezone" in space missions is very dumb.
Not if you’re one of those taxpayers. ;)
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First... oh, never mind. Here's a pic from orbit:
https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1760426223073734704 (https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1760426223073734704)
Something about the colour palette, lighting and camera combine to make this look like it's from UFO or Space:1999.
For future reference, CST is UTC-6. So the new landing time is 22:30 UTC, and everything kicks off at 21:17.
Thanks! I wish NASA would give the UTC times or the adjustment, as I find the many USA time zones confusing. Now I know what time in the morning to expect the landing here in Canberra.
A little bit past this South African's bedtime, sadly. At least the Starship test flights have all been in the afternoon for me.
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Looks like the landing time has been moved to earlier, 15:24 CST (21:24UTC if I'm counting on my fingers right). This isn't just a small shift, it's about an *hour* earlier than previously announced.
https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1760703551766933872
Flight controllers commanded a lunar correction maneuver to raise Odysseus’ orbit overnight and updated the anticipated landing time to 1524 CST.
We expect the landing stream to start on the IM-1 web page and NASA TV at 1400 CST. The content on both streams is identical.
https://intuitivemachines.com/im-1
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Looks like the landing time has been moved to earlier, 15:24 CST (21:24UTC if I'm counting on my fingers right)
https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1760703551766933872
Flight controllers commanded a lunar correction maneuver to raise Odysseus’ orbit overnight and updated the anticipated landing time to 1524 CST.
We expect the landing stream to start on the IM-1 web page and NASA TV at 1400 CST. The content on both streams is identical.
https://intuitivemachines.com/im-1
Yeah, NASA TV's schedule showing them to start covering at 20:00 UTC = 3 pm EST and landing at 4:24 pm EST, which is correct.
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Huh, why the sudden hurry?
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXyEmltrPZM
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Greater than expected propellant boiloff?
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Greater than expected propellant boiloff?
This was my first thought too, but one hour early is a short time period.
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The orbital period is roughly two hours. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_orbit)
So it seems after adjusting the orbit they were no longer at the right place to land at the previously scheduled time, they had a choice of landing an hour later or an hour earlier than planned, and chose the hour earlier option?
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The orbital period is roughly two hours. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_orbit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_orbit))
So it seems after adjusting the orbit they were no longer at the right place to land at the previously scheduled time, they had a choice of landing an hour later or an hour earlier than planned, and chose the hour earlier option?
Not sure about the reason they moved up the landing, but landing an hour earlier means they're going for the north rather than the south pole, I think.
I sure hope they simulated the landing at the new location.
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Huh... so they changed the location too? Nothing official about it...
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Probably has more to do with orbit residuals than location.
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The orbital period is roughly two hours. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_orbit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_orbit))
So it seems after adjusting the orbit they were no longer at the right place to land at the previously scheduled time, they had a choice of landing an hour later or an hour earlier than planned, and chose the hour earlier option?
Not sure about the reason they moved up the landing, but landing an hour earlier means they're going for the north rather than the south pole, I think.
I sure hope they simulated the landing at the new location.
No that is not what I was suggesting. I suspect that after adjusting their orbit (as they announced) they would no longer be in the proper position to land at the south pole at the previously estimated time.
(It's not like they can just choose any time to land, it depends on where they are in their orbit at any given time)
Edit: I'm just guessing in the dark. Where are all the math/orbit whizes when we need them?
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From Powered descent start to landing. (https://win98.altervista.org/space/exploration/3d/space-explorer-tracker.html?orbiter=-229¢er=@301&start=2024-02-22%2022:46&stop=2024-02-22%2022:50:08&step=100)
I think NASA horizons data are not yet updated to new timings.
Horizons data are in GMT.
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Don't let me interrupt you guys discussion on the upcoming landing with this basic video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyfXknMuZQM
Feb 22, 2024
If all goes to plan, Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus moon lander will touch down about 190 miles from the south pole of the moon, the target for NASA’s Artemis program to potentially send humans to the moon in the future. It would be the first American spacecraft to touch down on the moon since the Apollo program, and the first by a private firm.
On board are six NASA payloads and five commercial payloads. The NASA instruments include tools to study how the landing itself produces plumes of moon dust, several devices to help the craft land safely, and a device to measure radio waves and how they affect the lunar surface. The commercial payloads include a camera that will be tossed off the lander before it touches down to take photographs of the landing, 125 tiny sculptures by artist Jeff Koons and a chip designed to establish an archive of human knowledge on the moon.
Odysseus follows Astrobotic’s failed Peregrine landing, which suffered a fuel leak shortly after its January launch.
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The orbital period is roughly two hours. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_orbit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_orbit))
So it seems after adjusting the orbit they were no longer at the right place to land at the previously scheduled time, they had a choice of landing an hour later or an hour earlier than planned, and chose the hour earlier option?
Not sure about the reason they moved up the landing, but landing an hour earlier means they're going for the north rather than the south pole, I think.
I sure hope they simulated the landing at the new location.
No that is not what I was suggesting. I suspect that after adjusting their orbit (as they announced) they would no longer be in the proper position to land at the south pole at the previously estimated time.
(It's not like they can just choose any time to land, it depends on where they are in their orbit at any given time)
Edit: I'm just guessing in the dark. Where are all the math/orbit whizes when we need them?
The target orbit was 100 km and achieved was 92 km. Orbital period difference is only 48 seconds, or about 13 minutes/day. What are they compensating for?
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https://twitter.com/tobyliiiiiiiiii/status/1760720489952235936
What I’m most excited to see during today’s Intuitive Machines moon landing are the photos sent back from Embry-Riddle’s EagleCam.
As the lander nears the Moon‘s surface, EagleCam will separate from the lander and capture the first-ever third-person views of the spacecraft as it touches down.
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Now they've decided to make one more loop around the Moon after all.
https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1760748848991903878
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Could it be they want to update their NAVCAM images with this pass so the lighting is more accurate?
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The orbital period is roughly two hours. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_orbit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_orbit))
So it seems after adjusting the orbit they were no longer at the right place to land at the previously scheduled time, they had a choice of landing an hour later or an hour earlier than planned, and chose the hour earlier option?
Not sure about the reason they moved up the landing, but landing an hour earlier means they're going for the north rather than the south pole, I think.
I sure hope they simulated the landing at the new location.
No that is not what I was suggesting. I suspect that after adjusting their orbit (as they announced) they would no longer be in the proper position to land at the south pole at the previously estimated time.
(It's not like they can just choose any time to land, it depends on where they are in their orbit at any given time)
Edit: I'm just guessing in the dark. Where are all the math/orbit whizes when we need them?
Sorry, I should have explained: If the orbital period is 2 hours and they decided to land 1 hour earlier, that's half an orbit earlier. Since the original target was (close to) the south pole, the new target would have been on the opposite side of Luna from there, so close to the north pole.
They've changed the announced landing time again, so the above is obsolete.
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This smells to me like they are buying time while they deal with an anomaly, and I wouldn't be surprised if they delay even longer. Even if they do go for it on the next orbit attempt, I can't wait to hear (later) what happened.
That initial hour-earlier timing sure was confusing, as Exastro explained. I'm guessing that was just a plain old comms mistake, perhaps internal.
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The orbital period is roughly two hours. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_orbit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_orbit))
So it seems after adjusting the orbit they were no longer at the right place to land at the previously scheduled time, they had a choice of landing an hour later or an hour earlier than planned, and chose the hour earlier option?
Not sure about the reason they moved up the landing, but landing an hour earlier means they're going for the north rather than the south pole, I think.
I sure hope they simulated the landing at the new location.
No that is not what I was suggesting. I suspect that after adjusting their orbit (as they announced) they would no longer be in the proper position to land at the south pole at the previously estimated time.
(It's not like they can just choose any time to land, it depends on where they are in their orbit at any given time)
Edit: I'm just guessing in the dark. Where are all the math/orbit whizes when we need them?
Sorry, I should have explained: If the orbital period is 2 hours and they decided to land 1 hour earlier, that's half an orbit earlier. Since the original target was (close to) the south pole, the new target would have been on the opposite side of Luna from there, so close to the north pole.
They've changed the announced landing time again, so the above is obsolete.
I understand that but....
The previous plan called for a landing roughly 1 hour later than announced (and now shifted forward 2 hours which matches the orbital period so this change does not affect our attempt to understand the 1 hr change).
We are trying to understand how they could have changed the landing time by 1 hr which is half an orbit.
You are suggesting a different landing location to answer that question, (but a new last minute landing location is highly unlikely, unless it was always a plan to choose between two locations at the last moment, which was never announced so I doubt it).
I was suggesting that perhaps their overnight orbit change caused a half orbit drift in their expected time to arrive at the original planned location. (But as @lcs points out, the difference in orbital period for the announced orbit change is only a few seconds, so that could not by itself explain the half orbit change).
Regardless of the new time, there is still a half orbit change from yesterday which is a kind of big change and inquiring minds still want to know how that came about.
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https://twitter.com/cbs_spacenews/status/1760755060781285762
IM-1/Odysseus: Given the adjusted landing time of 6:24pm EST (2324 UTC), Intuitive Machines/NASA live coverage is now expected to begin at 5pm EST (2200 UTC); no explanation from Intuitive as to why they opted to delay the start of the descent
11:54 AM · Feb 22, 2024
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This smells to me like they are buying time while they deal with an anomaly, and I wouldn't be surprised if they delay even longer. Even if they do go for it on the next orbit attempt, I can't wait to hear (later) what happened.
That initial hour-earlier timing sure was confusing, as Exastro explained. I'm guessing that was just a plain old comms mistake, perhaps internal.
Hm.. I'm not sure it's an "anomaly". Delays have affected all maneuvers, even the first one. This mission had much more fluid schedule compared to previous missions and while it's annoying, it's good to see they're willing to delay rather than rush. Let's remember that the Russians opted not to delay Luna-25 landing so they can beat India even though it was obvious there are serious anomalies onboard, and we know how it ended.
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I see a countdown clock here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2pPHelrQr0
And live updates here:
https://spaceflightnow.com/2024/02/22/live-coverage-intuitive-machines-aims-to-become-first-commercial-lander-to-safely-reach-the-moon/
Supposed to have live video when available.
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This smells to me like they are buying time while they deal with an anomaly, and I wouldn't be surprised if they delay even longer. Even if they do go for it on the next orbit attempt, I can't wait to hear (later) what happened.
That initial hour-earlier timing sure was confusing, as Exastro explained. I'm guessing that was just a plain old comms mistake, perhaps internal.
.. or a time zone error
Heaven knows those are easy to make!
(See my post from yesterday ;) :P )
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I was suggesting that perhaps their overnight orbit change caused a half orbit drift in their expected time to arrive at the original planned location. (But as @lcs points out, the difference in orbital period for the announced orbit change is only a few seconds, so that could not by itself explain the half orbit change).
Regardless of the new time, there is still a half orbit change from yesterday which is a kind of big change and inquiring minds still want to know how that came about.
Maybe I missed a post but I haven't seen an 'announced orbit change' - just the statement that they did an orbit manuever,
not any orbital parameters like perior or height.
In the ~24 h since the orbit adjust burn the probe has done ~12 orbits, so would need an orbit period change of about 3 minutes which would correspond to about a 30 km altitude change.
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NSF also has live coverage scheduled:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqFS0IcOrDo
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Notably absent from the IM announcements are details of the initial and adjusted orbits and reasons for conducting a maneuver not previously announced. The orbit adjustment was described as raising the orbit; presumably it was conducted at apolune.
Question: using 1740 km as the radius of the Moon (so 1840 km would be a circular 100 km altitude orbit), had the vehicle hypothetically been in a 1780 x 1880 km (radial) orbit would it have been accurate to characterize that as a 92 km (altitude) circular orbit? (It would be 42 x 142 km in altitude.)
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I was suggesting that perhaps their overnight orbit change caused a half orbit drift in their expected time to arrive at the original planned location. (But as @lcs points out, the difference in orbital period for the announced orbit change is only a few seconds, so that could not by itself explain the half orbit change).
Regardless of the new time, there is still a half orbit change from yesterday which is a kind of big change and inquiring minds still want to know how that came about.
Maybe I missed a post but I haven't seen an 'announced orbit change' - just the statement that they did an orbit manuever,
not any orbital parameters like perior or height.
In the ~24 h since the orbit adjust burn the probe has done ~12 orbits, so would need an orbit period change of about 3 minutes which would correspond to about a 30 km altitude change.
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=59696.msg2570173#msg2570173
Flight controllers commanded a lunar correction maneuver to raise Odysseus’ orbit overnight and updated the anticipated landing time to 1524 CST
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What darkly amuses me about all the changes to the landing time...
...Is that the official IM-1 Press Kit notes how Odysseus is about the size of a TARDIS from "Doctor Who."
Perhaps their timey-wimey IMU is experiencing an issue. At this point if Daleks appear on EagleCAM's images I will not be surprised.
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I was suggesting that perhaps their overnight orbit change caused a half orbit drift in their expected time to arrive at the original planned location. (But as @lcs points out, the difference in orbital period for the announced orbit change is only a few seconds, so that could not by itself explain the half orbit change).
Regardless of the new time, there is still a half orbit change from yesterday which is a kind of big change and inquiring minds still want to know how that came about.
Maybe I missed a post but I haven't seen an 'announced orbit change' - just the statement that they did an orbit manuever,
not any orbital parameters like perior or height.
In the ~24 h since the orbit adjust burn the probe has done ~12 orbits, so would need an orbit period change of about 3 minutes which would correspond to about a 30 km altitude change.
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=59696.msg2570173#msg2570173
Flight controllers commanded a lunar correction maneuver to raise Odysseus’ orbit overnight and updated the anticipated landing time to 1524 CST
Exactly, 'raise orbit' but they don't say when ("overnight" is vague) or how much, either in orbital period or altitude. If they raised it to 100 x 200 km that would give the needed landing time change I think.
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I am glad they pushed back the NASA TV coverage, if it had been an hour earlier I would have missed the start as I only would have just woken up!
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I was suggesting that perhaps their overnight orbit change caused a half orbit drift in their expected time to arrive at the original planned location. (But as @lcs points out, the difference in orbital period for the announced orbit change is only a few seconds, so that could not by itself explain the half orbit change).
Regardless of the new time, there is still a half orbit change from yesterday which is a kind of big change and inquiring minds still want to know how that came about.
Maybe I missed a post but I haven't seen an 'announced orbit change' - just the statement that they did an orbit manuever,
not any orbital parameters like perior or height.
In the ~24 h since the orbit adjust burn the probe has done ~12 orbits, so would need an orbit period change of about 3 minutes which would correspond to about a 30 km altitude change.
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=59696.msg2570173#msg2570173
Flight controllers commanded a lunar correction maneuver to raise Odysseus’ orbit overnight and updated the anticipated landing time to 1524 CST
Exactly, 'raise orbit' but they don't say when ("overnight" is vague) or how much, either in orbital period or altitude. If they raised it to 100 x 200 km that would give the needed landing time change I think.
Sorry I missed your emphasis on 'announced orbit change' in your question referencing what I wrote. I suspect that lcs was assuming a change from 92km to the planned 100km orbit, and I just went along with that assumption, but you are obviously correct that they did not announce the details of the orbit change.
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NASA stream starting in about three minutes.
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Webcast has begun.
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Nova control and commentators.
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VIS display.
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Their visualizer uses Unreal Engine 5 (tm) - wonder if they got paid for that, lol.
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Saying orbit change put it in a slightly elliptical shape. Still targeting Malapert A.
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I wonder if the lunar mascons had any contribution to the orbital parameter adjustments.
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Interview with Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration.
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At 223 km and descending. That's a bit higher than a 100 km orbit! Speed is 1536 m/s.
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To clarify, they say the surprise (to us) "lunar correction maneuver to raise Odysseus' orbit overnight" obviates the need for the expected DOI burn that would be happening in a few minutes, so the next burn should be PDI.
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PDI is at 5:11 pm CST (23:11 UTC).
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Lander parts.
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IM VP of Space Systems. Created their own DSN.
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Deorbit, descent and landing (DDL) screen.
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L-59 minutes.
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ROSES? payload.
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LRA.
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Higher res, more legible cutouts that were shown of the DDL screen mentioned above. (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=59696.msg2570290#msg2570290)
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RFMG. Measures cryogenic propellant mass.
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"No-one has been to the Lunar surface in 50 years."
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IM CEO and design of engine.
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Eaglecam will take pictures of the landing.
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IM Chief Scientist talking about the choice of the landing site.
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On the livecast they say that the delay is to allow them to resove an anomaly with the lidar systems for Terrain Matching and Hazard Avoidance.
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Original landing location was Oceanus Procellum.
IM laser range finders are not working. Will use NASA's LIDAR system instead.
L-40 minutes. 79.4 km, 1.66 km/s.
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HRN and TRN are working.
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Talking about NDL (Navigation Doppler Radar).
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60 km, 1.68 km/s.
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NASA Associate Administrator.
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25 km, 1711 m/s.
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Lunar Node One and its mass simulator.
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Associate Administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.
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L-20 minutes. 7 minutes to PDI.
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Manoeuvre to ignition attitude.
Main engine gimbal check completed.
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Two minutes to PDI.
Tank press started.
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Ignition!
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L-12 minutes. Good thrust control.
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Landing animation. Into coast. 90%.
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L-10 minutes.
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L-9 minutes. Images are being processed from NDL.
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L-7 minutes. 90% thrust.
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Reporting T/W is 1.7
Is the T/W number with respect to earth or lunar gravity?
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L-6 minutes. My Mum came in to watch the landing, but walked due to the poor coverage!
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Reporting T/W is 1.7
Is the T/W number with respect to earth or lunar gravity?
Pretty sure it's lunar. 1.7g would zero the velocity in 100s.
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L-5 minutes. 9 km.
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This livestream is remarkably lame. No telemetry-driven animation?
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L-3 minutes.
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L-2 minutes. CLock is out by 15 seconds.
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Altitude at 1,000 metres using the NDL system.
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L-1 minute. Pitch over. 1 km.
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This livestream is remarkably lame. No telemetry-driven animation?
Like watching the world's most boring LAN. Can't even make out any juicy data on their screens. But otherwise they are quite transparent, which is great.
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Expected touchdown.
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Asking if getting telemetry.
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Mission Director asking team to look at last good data.
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At L+3 minutes. Backchannel working on possible communications issue. Asking Goonhilly station to do a sweep.
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https://twitter.com/amsatdl/status/1760808969205944413
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How can maintaining comm be that difficult through a normal landing?
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Did they?
do it?
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Expected landing time was 5:23 pm CST (23:23 UTC).
Eight degree excursion in roll during the landing, at 30 m. Post HDA.
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"We have a return signal we are tracking"
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"We have a return signal we are tracking"
Woo-hoo!
"Not dead yet"
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"Signs of life. We have a recurrent signal tracking."
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Autonomous fault detection will reset radio after 15 minutes. Switch antennas after another 15 minutes.
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Picking up faint signal from high gain antenna.
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"..on the surface of the Moon and transmitting"
"Odysseus has found it's new home."
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IM 1 is on the surface of the Moon!
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"Odysseus has found its new home."
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NASA Administrator announcement.
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End of coverage.
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Presumably the high gain antenna is not correctly pointing at Earth, but they've got a weak signal and I'm sure they'll be able to work things out. Here's hoping for good data in the next few days!
Congrats on being operational on the lunar surface, IM-1 team!
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https://twitter.com/amsatdl/status/1760813124507033964
We see a very faint signal 2210,58 Mhz !!
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Presumably the high gain antenna is not correctly pointing at Earth, but they've got a weak signal and I'm sure they'll be able to work things out. Here's hoping for good data in the next few days!
Congrats on being operational on the lunar surface, IM-1 team!
Yes, congratulations to IM and NASA for the successful landing! I would have thought they would be using an omni-directional low gain antenna to get some data during and after the landing.
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Presumably the high gain antenna is not correctly pointing at Earth, but they've got a weak signal and I'm sure they'll be able to work things out. Here's hoping for good data in the next few days!
Congrats on being operational on the lunar surface, IM-1 team!
Yes, congratulations to IM and NASA for the successful landing! I would have thought they would be using an omni-directional low gain antenna to get some data during and after the landing.
Yes, I agree Steven. My worry is that the lander is on the surface but the surface is sloping away from the earth. We have to wait for LRO to find it.
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Presumably the high gain antenna is not correctly pointing at Earth, but they've got a weak signal and I'm sure they'll be able to work things out. Here's hoping for good data in the next few days!
Congrats on being operational on the lunar surface, IM-1 team!
Yes, congratulations to IM and NASA for the successful landing! I would have thought they would be using an omni-directional low gain antenna to get some data during and after the landing.
I don't think they were using the DSN, so a low-gain antenna probably wouldn't work.
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Presumably the high gain antenna is not correctly pointing at Earth, but they've got a weak signal and I'm sure they'll be able to work things out. Here's hoping for good data in the next few days!
Congrats on being operational on the lunar surface, IM-1 team!
Yes, congratulations to IM and NASA for the successful landing! I would have thought they would be using an omni-directional low gain antenna to get some data during and after the landing.
They mentioned after 15 + 15 mins the lander will change antennas automatically unless they have managed to uplink something else. Hopefully it will switch to one of the omnidirectional antennas?
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Presumably the high gain antenna is not correctly pointing at Earth, but they've got a weak signal and I'm sure they'll be able to work things out. Here's hoping for good data in the next few days!
Congrats on being operational on the lunar surface, IM-1 team!
Yes, congratulations to IM and NASA for the successful landing! I would have thought they would be using an omni-directional low gain antenna to get some data during and after the landing.
I thought the same regarding where is the low gain/omindirectional attenna? Anyone have any links to the IM lander schematic with the equipment listed and labeled? I can' find anything at their website or online. Is it proprietary?
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Hopefully the antenna transmitting angle is not compromised by the lander resting on a steep slope. Fingers crossed!
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There are two hemispherical downlink antennas (see https://apps.fcc.gov/els/GetAtt.html?id=266519&x= ) so it is a bit of a mystery how the comm can be so bad if the vehicle is upright.
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I don't think they were using the DSN, so a low-gain antenna probably wouldn't work.
They mentioned in the stream that Canberra DSN's largest dish can be used in 12 hours or so. So they do have ability to use DSN as a backup it seems.
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I don't think they were using the DSN, so a low-gain antenna probably wouldn't work.
They were using Goonhilly, which has a 32 m antenna. That should be big enough for an omni!
https://www.goonhilly.org/
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If the weak signal persists, you can bet LRO will be called up ASAP, maybe even the Indian orbiter (name?).
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If the weak signal persists, you can bet LRO will be called up ASAP, maybe even the Indian orbiter (name?).
Chandrayaan 2.
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The 8 deg roll they mentioned in the chatter is worrisome. The Indian orbiter Chandrayaan-2 with its 0.32 m resolution OHRC (Orbiter High Resolution Camera) and LRO, between them, should be able spot Odysseus. Was anything said about the deployment of the Eagle camera, supposed to happen about 30 meter before touch down? It was at 30 m that the roll excursion happened - may actually be due to the ejection of Eagle. The Eagle might have caught the actual action (that was the purpose), but it would boil down to getting that data down. Things should become clear soon...
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hmmm all gone very quiet now.
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Still weak signal but visible:
https://twitter.com/amsatdl
last update 11 min ago.
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The 8 deg roll they mentioned in the chatter is worrisome. The Indian orbiter Chandrayaan-2 with its 0.32 m resolution OHRC (Orbiter High Resolution Camera) and LRO, between them, should be able spot Odysseus. Was anything said about the deployment of the Eagle camera, supposed to happen about 30 meter before touch down? It was at 30 m that the roll excursion happened - may actually be due to the ejection of Eagle. The Eagle might have caught the actual action (that was the purpose), but it would boil down to getting that data down. Things should become clear soon...
Even if the camera on Eagle works perfectly, the ability to transmit the pictures back to Earth is dependent on Odysseus to relay the images.
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DSN now is showing dish 63 at Madrid is trying to do something with LND1 aka the Lunar Node 1 navigation payload on IM-1. No signal indicated yet.
https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html
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https://twitter.com/amsatdl/status/1760817275051942152
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Now frequency jumped #IM1 @Int_Machines pic.twitter.com/WmCfgmVf8l
— AMSAT-DL (@amsatdl) February 23, 2024
Image from the Tweet. The signal is barely visible.
L+1 hour. Fault detection should have switched radios and antennas by now, which could explain the different frequencies.
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DSN now is showing dish 63 at Madrid is trying to do something with LND1 aka the Lunar Node 1 navigation payload on IM-1. No signal indicated yet.
https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html
Seems that dish is no longer accepting signal?
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I do not see a signal at 2210.58 in the spectrum posted. Maybe it is seen on a trace with a longer integration?
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DSN now is showing dish 63 at Madrid is trying to do something with LND1 aka the Lunar Node 1 navigation payload on IM-1. No signal indicated yet.
https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html
Seems that dish is no longer accepting signal?
It's back. Dish is moving.
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DSN now is showing dish 63 at Madrid is trying to do something with LND1 aka the Lunar Node 1 navigation payload on IM-1. No signal indicated yet.
https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html
Seems that dish is no longer accepting signal?
The dish is back on-line but not receiving a signal yet.
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Dish 63 is the 70 meter in Madrid. Bringing out the big guns.
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The dish is back on-line but not receiving a signal yet.
Graphic showing this.
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The Nova-C lander, named Odysseus, landed on in the south polar regions of the moon at 6:23 p.m. Eastern on the IM-1 mission. It took about 15 minutes after landing for controllers to confirm they were receiving a signal from the lander on the surface, getting only a weak signal initially.
“What we can confirm, without a doubt, is our equipment is on the surface of the moon and we are transmitting,” Tim Crain, Intuitive Machines flight director for the landing attempt, said. “So, congratulations, IM team.”
Intuitive Machines delayed the landing by two hours to perform an additional orbit of the moon. The company said that it determined that laser rangefinders on the lander, a key instrument to enable a precise landing, were not working properly. Controllers uploaded a software patch to enable to the lander to use in their place use a NASA Doppler lidar payload originally intended to be a technology demonstration.
“Basically, it is the primary system to help provide the velocity and altitude information,” said Prasun Desai, NASA deputy associate administrator for space technology, of the NASA payload during the landing broadcast.
https://spacenews.com/intuitive-machines-lands-on-the-moon/
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Graphic showing this.
If you scroll down in the right pane, you can see azimuth and elevation slowly shift, just a little sign it's still active.
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Still transmitting!
"It's getting late over here, but #IM1 @Int_Machines landed on the moon and is alive!!!! Congratulations!👏👏👏 Somewhat weaker signal than expected, but it's definitely there, switching antennas/radios and calling home. 📡〰️〰️"
https://twitter.com/amsatdl/status/1760827687596102054
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I watched when Apollo 17 landed. It wasn't like this... No squinting at spectral displays for dim signals! Nobody made speeches before it was certain.
- Ed Kyle
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Landed in a crater?
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Congrats IM, great technology.
Hopefully they sort the comms and we get some data soon.
I think they will get it all sorted.
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I watched when Apollo 17 landed. It wasn't like this... No squinting at spectral displays for dim signals! Nobody made speeches before it was certain.
That's what three orders of magnitude less money gets. :-) $100B vs $100M.
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Time to pop the champagne!
"Today, for the first time in half a century, America has returned to the Moon 🇺🇸.
On the eighth day of a quarter-million-mile voyage, @Int_Machines aced the landing of a lifetime.
What a feat for IM, @SpaceX & @NASA.
What a triumph for humanity.
Odysseus has taken the Moon."
https://twitter.com/SenBillNelson/status/1760832835630285138
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Time to pop the champagne!
Bill Nelson celebrating too early methinks. If they haven't established a data link, then the mission isn't a success even if there's some signs of life from down there.
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Lunar Node 1 is now off of the DSN current list of contacts. Dish 63 is listed as inactive.
Edit: looks like that might be because a Voyager 1 contact was scheduled.
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https://twitter.com/CSIRO/status/1760820390044344744
In case people wondering these were the dishes originally planned to be used for the mission: from FCC docs:
Table 2: LTN Dish Network
DSS17 Morehead State University Space Sciences Center, Morehead, KY USA (21m)
DSS49 Parkes Observatory (Rx only), Parkes, NSW Australia (64m)
GHY6 Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station, Goonhilly Downs, UK (32m)
IDSN32 Indian Deep Space Network, Byalalu, Karnataka, India (32m)
IDSN18 Indian Deep Space Network, Byalalu, Karnataka, India (18m)
The landing was tracked at Goonhilly.
It is nice to see that there are commercial alternatives to NASA's DSN for Moon missions - one of the complaints about Artemis 1 was the extra load on the DSN bumping other science missions off the tracking schedule.
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DSN 63 is no longer trying to track LND1.
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That's what three orders of magnitude less money gets. :-) $100B vs $100M.
IIRC, the Apollo LM only had 20 watts of radiated power and the modulation schemes we have now are far more sophisticated and noise-resilient. I really don't think the comms can be this bad without a major anomaly.
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Would it not be a long-term issue for a lander if it intends to be in a crater that has problematic issues with communication? Perhaps a communication relay satellite in a highly elliptical polar orbit could be setup to serve the South Pole with all the other landers anticipating to land there.
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Would it not be a long-term issue for a lander if it intends to be in a crater that has problematic issues with communication? Perhaps a communication relay satellite in a highly elliptical orbit could be placed to serve the South Pole with all the other landers anticipating to land there.
Funnily enough, the IM-2 mission includes exactly that. KHON-1 is a ~$1M satellite bus intended for a frozen lunar orbit designed to serve the south pole.
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Would it not be a long-term issue for a lander if it intends to be in a crater that has problematic issues with communication? Perhaps a communication relay satellite in a highly elliptical polar orbit could be setup to serve the South Pole with all the other landers anticipating to land there.
Funnily enough, the IM-2 mission includes exactly that. KHON-1 is a ~$1M satellite bus intended for a frozen lunar orbit designed to serve the south pole.
Yes, thanks for reminding me.
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I watched when Apollo 17 landed. It wasn't like this... No squinting at spectral displays for dim signals! Nobody made speeches before it was certain.
- Ed Kyle
I hear you loud and clear, Ed Kyle. However, I think that shouldn't take away from the achievement here, leaving the speeches aside. This is done on a shoestring budget compared to the Apollo program and hugely more efficient - way to go...
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The landing was tracked at Goonhilly.
So Odysseus is the first Moon Goonie! ::)
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Time to pop the champagne!
Bill Nelson celebrating too early methinks. If they haven't established a data link, then the mission isn't a success even if there's some signs of life from down there.
If there ends up being no data link, then certainly key *science* objectives for NASA would not be met, since these include "studies of plume-surface interactions, radio astronomy, and space weather interactions with the lunar surface" via the NASA instruments on board. You need comms to obtain all that!
OTOH, it would meet most of the *technical* objectives of the mission as defined by NASA, which include demonstration of "precision landing technologies and communication and navigation node capabilities." So, maybe, a partial success.
That being the case, if I were Nelson, I would have held off, or qualified my comments. But I suspect NASA leadership was looking pretty hard for a win today, after a difficult month of news cycles.
But obviously we're still waiting for more developments, and it's too early to say what the final verdict is going to be.
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Its standing!
"After troubleshooting communications, flight controllers have confirmed Odysseus is upright and starting to send data.
Right now, we are working to downlink the first images from the lunar surface."
https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1760838333851148442
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Time to pop the champagne!
Bill Nelson celebrating too early methinks. If they haven't established a data link, then the mission isn't a success even if there's some signs of life from down there.
Per the 16 predefined mission success criteria, this is a success!
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15. Terminal descent
16. Landed
Anything beyond landing is icing on the cake. Maybe not fully functional, like the JAXA SLIM, but I think, certainly a great step forward.
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Its standing!
"After troubleshooting communications, flight controllers have confirmed Odysseus is upright and starting to send data.
Right now, we are working to downlink the first images from the lunar surface."
https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1760838333851148442
Heck yeah.
Very exciting day. I can tell you Columbia Sportswear has been talking this up big time internally. Doubly exciting for me since I've always been an astronomy/space nerd. Thanks to you guys for all the info through this mission!
Sent from my SM-S911U using Tapatalk
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Its standing!
"After troubleshooting communications, flight controllers have confirmed Odysseus is upright and starting to send data.
Right now, we are working to downlink the first images from the lunar surface."
Great! looking forward to the EagleCam images.
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I watched when Apollo 17 landed. It wasn't like this... No squinting at spectral displays for dim signals! Nobody made speeches before it was certain.
- Ed Kyle
I hear you loud and clear, Ed Kyle. However, I think that shouldn't take away from the achievement here, leaving the speeches aside. This is done on a shoestring budget compared to the Apollo program and hugely more efficient - way to go...
If I wrote speeches I would summarize the mission plan, and explain where we are right now. Then I would congratulate the team for achieving some major milestones and finish up with a hopeful wish going forward.
"Today the Nova-C lunar lander Odysseus attempted something that has not been achieved by the US in over 50 years, a successful landing on the surface of the Moon. The team rallied to address some last minute technical challenges and attempted the lunar landing less than an hour ago. The good news is that we have strong evidence the landing was successful, after receiving a faint signal from the spacecraft. This is an awesome achievment by the team at Intuitive Machines, following years of development to create the elements needed for an ongoing ability to deliver payloads to the lunar surface. Time will tell but I personally look forward to more good news and, hopefully, more good data from the mission. Congratulations to the IM-1 team and everyone involved."
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Time to pop the champagne!
Bill Nelson celebrating too early methinks. If they haven't established a data link, then the mission isn't a success even if there's some signs of life from down there.
Per the 16 predefined mission success criteria, this is a success!
...
15. Terminal descent
16. Landed
Anything beyond landing is icing on the cake. Maybe not fully functional, like the JAXA SLIM, but I think, certainly a great step forward.
Nice if you set the bar so low. I'm a scientist; I want to see its science instruments return data otherwise it's only a bureaucratic success.
I'm heartened by the new news that we might be getting data soon, however!
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Heck yeah.
Very exciting day. I can tell you Columbia Sportswear has been talking this up big time internally. Doubly exciting for me since I've always been an astronomy/space nerd. Thanks to you guys for all the info through this mission!
Sent from my SM-S911U using Tapatalk
Being an Oregon guy and having met Gert Boyle a few times, I'm super excited about the Columbia Sportswear connection. I'm wearing a jacket, a t-shirt, and shoes from Columbia. Not because of the landing today but that's what I wear every day. Go Columbia Sportswear!
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I’m sure all the folks at Intuitive Machines are sad that they achieved “only a bureaucratic success.” :o
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If Odysseus fails to return quality science, especially South Pole Ice readings, that puts extra pressure on Astrobotic and NASA to succeed with Griffin. NASA is going to need some full-value CLPS successes at some point to keep Congress at bay.
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If Odysseus fails to return quality science, especially South Pole Ice readings, that puts extra pressure on Astrobotic and NASA to succeed with Griffin. NASA is going to need some full-value CLPS successes at some point to keep Congress at bay.
Considering that Astrobotic's Griffin lander is quite different to Peregrine, being much larger and different in configuration, and that Peregrine didn't even make it to Lunar orbit, Griffin's chances of success are probably 50% at best.
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My Mum's comment on IM's coverage of the landing. "Ahh, rubbish."
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My Mum's comment on IM's coverage of the landing. "Ahh, rubbish."
Over here it was: "is that it?"
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Lunar Node 1 is now being tracked by a Madrid 34m dish.
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Signal looks a little stronger.
https://twitter.com/amsatdl/status/1760850065164239038/photo/1
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A bit from Tim Crain on the communication challenge:
https://twitter.com/CrainTim/status/1760853313010950166#m
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I watched when Apollo 17 landed. It wasn't like this... No squinting at spectral displays for dim signals! Nobody made speeches before it was certain.
- Ed Kyle
I did not have “Wholeheartedly agreeing with Ed Kyle” on my 2024 NSF Bingo card, but here we are…
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Landed in a crater?
No really, at the poles, nearby terrain, rocks, craters could be a major issue blocking the signal.
Once the Earth and Moon move more relative to each other (or the Moon spins a bit), we may see stronger signal (or weaker).
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Landed in a crater?
No really, at the poles, nearby terrain, rocks, craters could be a major issue blocking the signal.
Once the Earth and Moon move more relative to each other, we may see stronger signal (or weaker).
The Earth is in almost a fixed position in the lunar sky.
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A bit from Tim Crain on the communication challenge:
Here is the entire transcript of his nine twitter posts:
From what I gathered, they expected they might have a challenge pointing the antennas after landing so it was not off-nominal as far as I know. And remember there are unknowns about comm systems in the lunar south polar region because… /1
2/…the Earth is low to the horizon and this can have unexpected consequences. Years ago I wrote a proposal inside NASA (that was not funded) to do a full end-to-end robotic mission test at the Haughton Mars research station in the Canadian High Arctic. Part of the justification
3/…for the rest was that we do not know how end-to-end communications will perform from a geologically rough site with the antennas pointing not very high above the horizon. The problem is that radio signals skip off surfaces then they recombine with the signals that went in a…
4/…straight line, and with the signals that skipped off all the other nearby surfaces. These signals can add together in and out of phase so the overall signal fades in amplitude. Because the site is geologically rough with little vegetation, you could get reflections that are
5/…worse than usual. Then add into this that the soil on the Moon includes lots more glass than surfaces on Earth — like 50% or even as much as 80% glass by weight in the soil in some locations — and it could be even worse. And also on the Moon you have the effects of…
6/…space plasma, solar wind, ultraviolet photoemission causing electrical charges that can spark and make electromagnetic noise, and cosmic/solar high energy particles affecting your equipment, and it adds up to huge uncertainty in how the comms will perform.
So part of…
7/…the mission is to TEST how well they will be able to communicate back to Earth.
I don’t have details, but I suspect they designed the comms system with some conservatism in mind, so if they don’t get a signal right away then it probably went through a very cautious set of
8/…steps to look for the signal to establish comms. Also they don’t know exactly the slope they landed on, and high gain antennas have to be pointed precisely to the receiving antenna. So they probably designed a procedure to look for the signal carefully and exhaustively.
9/…That cautious procedure probably takes time. So as a former comms/nav engineer on the Shuttle and Space Station, I am not surprised at all that it took some time to get signal. It seems completely nominal and successful as far as I can tell so far. /end
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Note that the above transcript that catdlr just posted is analysis from Dr. Phil Metzger. Tim Crain's reply to that analysis, if for some reason not seen above, was:
We had a big roll maneuver at the end that was a challenge. Next time I want antennae that can be pointed!
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The Bochum Observatory livestream (https://youtube.com/watch?v=2pPBCIpVGsM) is currently showing a signal at 2210.58MHz.
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A bit from Tim Crain on the communication challenge:
Here is the entire transcript of his nine twitter posts:
Thanks for transcribing. I dumped my Twitter account (which dated back to October 2007) for good over a year ago, well before Elon X’ifiied it and made it even worse than it had become. Now I can’t even see TwiX links FROM THE SITE ITSELF without being nagged to create a new account (as if) or log in with my existing Google or Apple accounts (hahah, nope). So following chains of linked posts is effectively impossible.
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The most intense solar flare since 2017, and of the current solar cycle was in progress at the time of the landing too.
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Landed in a crater?
No really, at the poles, nearby terrain, rocks, craters could be a major issue blocking the signal.
Once the Earth and Moon move more relative to each other, we may see stronger signal (or weaker).
The Earth is in almost a fixed position in the lunar sky.
Earth can move around a bit more than this suggests, plus or minus about 5 degrees. It is at least possible that this could make a difference, but it might move in the wrong direction.
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A bit from Tim Crain on the communication challenge:
Here is the entire transcript of his nine twitter posts:
Thanks for transcribing. I dumped my Twitter account (which dated back to October 2007) for good over a year ago, well before Elon X’ifiied it and made it even worse than it had become. Now I can’t even see TwiX links FROM THE SITE ITSELF without being nagged to create a new account (as if) or log in with my existing Google or Apple accounts (hahah, nope). So following chains of linked posts is effectively impossible.
Herb,
Same with me, but when I started assisting with SpaceX launch coverage with Steven P. and FutureSpaceTourist, along with Starbase ops, I decided to jump in and get an account. I try to provide as much as possible without having to link to Twitter following Future's Twitter post format. Are you also having issues viewing a post that has a video? If you have any suggestions, please contact me, I'm open to doing more to make it easier for the forum membership.
Tony
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More from Tim Crain:
Christian Davenport: "So, yeah, seems like they just called an audible and switched out the navigation system on the fly, if I'm understanding this correctly."
Tim Crain: "Pretty much"
https://twitter.com/CrainTim/status/1760854092576903611
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Note that the above transcript that catdlr just posted is analysis from Dr. Phil Metzger.
Regarding multipath distortion, wouldn't the elephant in the room (water) be a major contributor? After all the Clementine reflectivity experiment used S-band radio signals at the same frequency to detect subsurface water, although the results were disputed.
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Signal strength has dropped away.
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Signal has come back up. Could be antenna was not pointing correctly.
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Just for the record, the dish at Bochum Observatory is 20m.
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If it is multipath from the low Earth angle, changing frequency, even a little, might help. The spacecraft S-band downlink band is not all that wide, though. And maybe the spacecraft downlink frequency is fixed.
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I measure the bandwidth to be about 2 kHz. Assuming BPSK modulation and 1.4 Nyquist bandwidth, that gives a symbol rate of about 1400 sym/s. With rate 1/6 coding, data rate could be 240 bit/s.
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Landed in a crater?
No really, at the poles, nearby terrain, rocks, craters could be a major issue blocking the signal.
Once the Earth and Moon move more relative to each other, we may see stronger signal (or weaker).
The Earth is in almost a fixed position in the lunar sky.
Earth can move around a bit more than this suggests, plus or minus about 5 degrees. It is at least possible that this could make a difference, but it might move in the wrong direction.
Sure. That's why I said "almost": see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libration#Lunar_libration
All these small movements are far too complicated for me to visualize easily. The largest component by far seems to be east-west along the horizon, and this might be important if the horizon is uneven to the lunar north of the site. Ideally we will get a picture of the earth as seen by the lander and we can then see what the situation really is.
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If I understand the comms docs (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=52116.msg2247996#msg2247996) correctly, the signal currently being observed (2210.6MHz) is the low bandwidth telemetry downlink.
High bandwidth downlink should be at 2250 MHz, if it's operational.
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https://twitter.com/BettinaInclan/status/1760859546212536797
https://twitter.com/BettinaInclan/status/1760842570748539267
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If I understand the comms docs (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=52116.msg2247996#msg2247996) correctly, the signal currently being observed (2210.6MHz) is the low bandwidth telemetry downlink.
High bandwidth downlink should be at 2250 MHz, if it's operational.
That might be the problem, a last minute roll meant the high gain antenna is not pointing at Earth, hence they got to use the wide low gain antennas...
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Time to pop the champagne!
Bill Nelson celebrating too early methinks. If they haven't established a data link, then the mission isn't a success even if there's some signs of life from down there.
Per the 16 predefined mission success criteria, this is a success!
...
15. Terminal descent
16. Landed
Anything beyond landing is icing on the cake. Maybe not fully functional, like the JAXA SLIM, but I think, certainly a great step forward.
Nice if you set the bar so low. I'm a scientist; I want to see its science instruments return data otherwise it's only a bureaucratic success.
I'm heartened by the new news that we might be getting data soon, however!
I beg to differ. "16. Landed" is far from a low bar! First time for a private to company to land on the moon, that too closest to the pole ever is an achievement to be feted. (I am a scientist, too).
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I beg to differ. "16. Landed" is far from a low bar! First time for a private to company to land on the moon, that too closest to the pole ever is an achievement to be feted. (I am a scientist, too).
Can somebody explain this "private company" part? Hughes built Surveyor. Hughes was a company.
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I beg to differ. "16. Landed" is far from a low bar! First time for a private to company to land on the moon, that too closest to the pole ever is an achievement to be feted. (I am a scientist, too).
Can somebody explain this "private company" part? Hughes built Surveyor. Hughes was a company.
NASA didn't buy the IM-1 lander, it only purchased transportation services.
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I beg to differ. "16. Landed" is far from a low bar! First time for a private to company to land on the moon, that too closest to the pole ever is an achievement to be feted. (I am a scientist, too).
Can somebody explain this "private company" part? Hughes built Surveyor. Hughes was a company.
NASA didn't buy the IM-1 lander, it only purchased transportation services.
Thank you, I stand corrected - did not know that the Surveyors were built by Hughes. My understanding, still, is that there is a difference - this was entirely IM's from scratch, NASA CLPS laid out the overall goals rather than technical details. A different model than before - this is my understanding (what yg1968 said)
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I beg to differ. "16. Landed" is far from a low bar! First time for a private to company to land on the moon, that too closest to the pole ever is an achievement to be feted. (I am a scientist, too).
Can somebody explain this "private company" part? Hughes built Surveyor. Hughes was a company.
NASA didn't buy the IM-1 lander, it only purchased transportation services.
How much of the total development cost and total cost of this mission was paid for by NASA?
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I believe it was fully paid for by NASA CLPS
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Further discussions of this nature might be better suited for the CLPS thread (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=45580.0) or the general thread for Intuitive Machines (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=52116.0), not the thread dedicated to IM-1 mission updates.
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I beg to differ. "16. Landed" is far from a low bar! First time for a private to company to land on the moon, that too closest to the pole ever is an achievement to be feted. (I am a scientist, too).
Can somebody explain this "private company" part? Hughes built Surveyor. Hughes was a company.
NASA didn't buy the IM-1 lander, it only purchased transportation services.
How much of the total development cost and total cost of this mission was paid for by NASA?
No development cost is paid through CLPS. NASA paid for the transportation costs to the Moon of its 6 payloads. Although, NASA is the anchor tenant for these missions, there is also non-NASA payloads (6 of them on this mission). For IM-1, NASA paid $118M for these services (which includes the services of the LV).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitive_Machines_Nova-C
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Lunar Node 1 tracking passed from Madrid to a 34m dish at Goldstone.
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Getting a strong signal with the Moon low on the horizon.
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LOS in 45 minutes.
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With the antenna now under 8 degrees to the horizon, those narrow signals on the waterfall might just be terrestrial returns. Hard to tell of course.
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Public Affairs and corporate communications issues aside, a robotic lander made a successful soft landing after its primary altitude sensor failed and a heroic engineering effort allowed one of the scientific payloads to substitute for it! That's some steely-eyed missile-folk at work.
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I think a potential lesson to take from Odysseus is the importance of a polar communication satellite.
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The carrier signal has disappeared, probably because the Moon is too low on the horizon.
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Still seeing a carrier at 12 minutes to LOS!
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How much of the total development cost and total cost of this mission was paid for by NASA?
No development cost is paid through CLPS. NASA paid for the transportation costs to the Moon of its 6 payloads. Although, NASA is the anchor tenant for these missions, there is also non-NASA payloads (6 of them on this mission). For IM-1, NASA paid $118M for these services (which includes the services of the LV).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitive_Machines_Nova-C
Just to add… The CLPS service procurement could cover 100% of the cost of the IM-1 mission, and it would still be a privately owned and operated mission. When the US military uses all the bandwidth on a commercial comsat, that comsat doesn’t suddenly become a government-owned and -operated satellite. Same goes when the US military buys up all the seats on an airline flight to move troops around. Or when a waste management company serves municipal governments exclusively. Etc.
Folks with ulterior motives (Mike Griffin) or old agendas (Scott Pace) like to make this specious argument that private space exploration isn’t really private when NASA is footing most of the bill. But somehow their logic only applies to space exploration and not the scores of other private sector entities and activities where governments are the dominant or only customers.
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Getting a very strong signal with three minutes to LOS. Most likely Earth interference.
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Its all yellow at LOS! It does look like the two tracks from IM 1 fades out before Earth interference increases.
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Public Affairs and corporate communications issues aside, a robotic lander made a successful soft landing after its primary altitude sensor failed and a heroic engineering effort allowed one of the scientific payloads to substitute for it! That's some if steely-eyed missile-folk at work.
It’s exactly the sort of thing you want to see out of these public-private partnerships. An agile private sector mission control leveraged government assets in real time to save a landing. And without some private sector cost-sharing, efficiencies, and risk-taking combined with government customers, experts and experience, the mission probably never would have made it to the pad in the first place.
It’s not a universally applicable model. But where it can be used, if you structure programs to leverage the best from the private and public sectors, good things happen, often things with performance/budget/schedule/risk profiles that are otherwise impossible to meet.
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List of dishes IM will use privately. (Though they've been using the DSN as well now).
Looks like the best they have access to privately is Parkes (super cool to see it used here).
They'll have it in about two hours, once the moon rises over eastern Australia.
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Scott Tilley on X doesn't sound convinced that all is OK with IM-1
https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1760899660510630243
(this thread has several posts showing command uplinks)
https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1760911322106003747
https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1760914852086681715
So I wonder is IM receiving commands? Or is it only getting commands when hit with lots of transmit power?
Downlink has been very weak as well...
Seems the antennas on IM-1 are certainly not pointing in the right directions
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Also seems DSN hasn't shown any reception yet from the LND1 payload, maybe they haven't been able to tell IM-1 to turn it on yet.
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oh this is disappointing, was hoping for better news this morning.
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Congratulations on (my) awakening this morning for Intuitive Machines! It sure is a feat to reach the lunar surface in some transmitting form, after having proven the resilency and operability of a completely new lunar lander propulsion system that was not obvious would work as advertised.
However - I feel that even though they reached the surface more or less intact, there is a MAJOR objective they weren't able to tick off their list: the Hazard Detection and Avoidance (point 13) with their own systems. You don't get to claim full success when one of your lander's critical systems is inoperable (the laser rangefinders) and your full sequence is only possible thanks to a *customer*'s tech demo that happened to be aboard (and work correctly). For me, that's akin to a passenger bus -which is kind what they're advertising CLPS missions as- blowing the transmission and relying on the passengers pushing to keep it moving.
What if the tech demo was a radiation sensor or an accelerometer, or if there were just lunar surface science payloads? The landing would have been aborted at best, or would probably have swiftly crashed if the deorbit burn had already taken place.
I'm comparing the intended public perception for this lander with that of SLIM. First, their broadcast included real-time telemetry displays that allowed the viewers to follow along and try to interpret the data as it came in. IM-1 *did* have that, and in spite of having provided pretty good visibility into their successes and challenges since the beginning, that weaned off a little bit as the mission progressed. During the webcast they did not provide telemetry displays in spite of showing them at the beginning, leading to frustrated viewers and potentially interested parties disengaging.
But by this time during landing SLIM had already confirmed ejection of the rovers, and were sprinting to have data downloaded. They'd done a long-faced press conference where press were (wrongfully, IMO) obsessing over success criteria rather than the actual events on the Moon, but were (rightfully, IMO) far away from uncorking champagne and making smiling speeches all over the Internet, in a similar situation as Odysseus is in right now, but with a nominal descent maneuver and a strong initial signal and confirmation of data download. Moreover, SLIM's primary objective was to demonstrate pinpoint landing accuracy - not surface science, while IM-1's is first and foremost a surface science payload delivery mission.
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I wonder how these CPLS contracts are written, do they get an extra payment on successful "delivery" of the NASA packages to the surface of the moon? Maybe they are celebrating because they just qualified for some extra cash vs celebrating a fully successful mission...
Anyway we do have to remember these are new inexperienced companies, the staff probably just got really excited and hit the success button a bit too early. The fact they have a signal coming back hopefully means most of the NASA stuff can transmit back data.
There has been no confirmation yet that IM actually is receiving and responding to commands, so I just hope the scientific stuff was programmed to start automatically or something.
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Yes, the broadcast quality was quite odd. I felt like I could just follow the text messages here and other sources instead of watching it. And it looks like a general problem with NASA-involved broadcasts.
For example, it was really frustrating for me not seeing telemetry data in the Psyche launch last year. It's something beyond my understanding. They could just use the usual SpaceX layout, what is definitely better.
Anyway congratulations to the IM team for the successful launch. I hope they will be able to resolve the issue and the mission will be able to do some science.
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Illuminating (somewhat speculative) thread about the haphazard last-minute changes seen in the mission. It might all have to do with improper tracking and the ticking doomsday clock to cryo boiloff.
https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1760865701995127191 (https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1760865701995127191)
What happened to IM-1 as it approached the Moon?
Intuitive Machines elected to not do TCM3.
The lander's trajectory diverged from the expected trajectory as it approach the Moon and at LOI entered the wrong orbit based on my data.
IM-1 didn't enter the expected orbit and couldn't make the landing time. One can see the lander was running >15 minutes early on published predictions after LOI. Coupled with the divergence before LOI tells us something.
This left Intuitive Machines with limited time to act as their cryogenic fuel was quickly boiling off forcing hasty changes to their landing plans and begin a series of orbital changes to attempt to get the lander down.
After some review, noted something interesting prior to all the scrambling in lunar orbit by the IM team all the predictions had a fixed landing time. Based on obs of previous landers their landing times changed based on past activities. IM-1 was doing this backward
Rather than allowing flexibility they were forcing solutions rather than correcting for minor errors in the trajectory. Add in the fact they are using a 'new' ground support network to determine 'where' IM-1 was possibly introduced significant errors.
I suggest they thought they knew where IM-1 was after TCM2 and cancelled TCM3, but really didn't know. Arrived at the LOI timing burned and ended up in the wrong orbit. Scrambled and somehow landed 'somewhere' on the Moon today.
The seat of the pants flying likely resulted is errors or suboptimal landing decisions. If they landed at a latitude longitude not planned for the HGA will be off. The hemispherics are aimed straight up.
[/size]
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I think these guys went to sleep :) Or at least those responsible for public relations :P This is in line with previous events - we won't get any news for the next few hours. The website hasn't been updated properly and even the live broadcast link is still active. All we have is the word of Tim Crain and Intuitive Machines Twitter account that the lander is sending data.
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Has a post-landing media teleconference been announced?
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Did anyone else notice the descent camera images in the top left of one of the three Mission Control views? They removed the feed shortly before the landing.
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Did anyone else notice the descent camera images in the top left of one of the three Mission Control views? They removed the feed shortly before the landing.
I was looking at those too, but I am not sure they were live camera images, I think they might have been renders based on the telemetry. The reason I think this is that the images updated at the same rate as the rest of the render including the smooth interpolated bits and the sudden jumps when fresh telemetry update arrived.
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Now that was probably the most opaque of all the live streams concerning lunar landing attempts that we've seen in quite some time (excluding the Chang'e missions)...
Among the strange things that have happened over the last few days, I would certainly rank a last-minute change in the landing time by 1h atop that list. At the very least it is a very late acknowledgement that something hadn't been executed quite according to plan in the previous day, whether it was the initial orbit around the Moon or something else that may have happened since (including an orbital change at some point?).
I also heard something about two range finders failing and NASA's NDL instrument being used instead of them to support landing? This isn't an indication of a larger problem per se, but it does require changing the flight software late in the game, as well as having to use two new body-relative vectors (the line of sight vectors from two of the three NDL beams) to correctly recover altitude from slant range measurements.
Not knowing, at this time, anything specific about how anything during the entire descent went, I did hear calls for the pitch over manoeuvre, an indication of 1km altitude from NDL measurements, and a roll manoeuvre of at least 8deg at 30m altitude. Depending on which angle is roll (is it the angle around the thrust axis?), the last point might be only slightly or very worrying. A rotation about the thrust axis may "just" contribute to degrade communications, whereas a rotation about any of the two other axes at this altitude may cause undesirable lateral velocities at a critical time.
In any case, what I thought was stranger happened later. The IM-1 signal was quite faint after landing, although it was picked up by a 20m station in Bochum (https://twitter.com/amsatdl/status/1760827687596102054). About two hours after the planned landing time, IM claimed on Twitter not just that the lander was upright but that the communications problems had been solved and they were attempting to download images from the lander (https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1760838333851148442) - and then had nothing else to say over the next 8h (and counting). The landing area is surrounded by quite dramatic topography, and close to the lunar south pole where the Earth never rises very high above the lunar horizon... so this is maybe an indication that if we're going to seriously explore and then settle in this area, we might need relay satellites...
But then again, now it's been 11h and we still don't have any other information that can definitively demonstrate that either a successful landing took place, or that the vehicle is still alive. How long will batteries last, and how likely is it that the solar panels are generating power where they've landed? IM would be the first to know that it is in their interest to inform the public of what's occurred as quickly as possible (given that they're a public company).
So... all in all, I'd say... Looks like they might have done it, but let's have more data before we can say how much in shape they are.
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Illuminating (somewhat speculative) thread about the haphazard last-minute changes seen in the mission. It might all have to do with improper tracking and the ticking doomsday clock to cryo boiloff.
[...]
IM-1 didn't enter the expected orbit and couldn't make the landing time.[...] I suggest they thought they knew where IM-1 was after TCM2 and cancelled TCM3, but really didn't know. Arrived at the LOI timing burned and ended up in the wrong orbit. Scrambled and somehow landed 'somewhere' on the Moon today.
Tilley's speculation makes some valid points. Close reading of the IM press release does NOT indicate the lunar-orbit adjustment maneuver raised the periapsis, only that it raised the orbit. Combining that with the lack of a descent insertion burn might indicate the initial lunar orbit already had a periapsis near the height and location of the planned braking burn. Perhaps the lunar orbit adjustment raised the apoapsis simply to get the desired orbit phasing.
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Now that was probably the most opaque of all the live streams concerning lunar landing attempts that we've seen in quite some time (excluding the Chang'e missions)...
Among the strange things that have happened over the last few days, I would certainly rank a last-minute change in the landing time by 1h atop that list. At the very least it is a very late acknowledgement that something hadn't been executed quite according to plan in the previous day, whether it was the initial orbit around the Moon or something else that may have happened since (including an orbital change at some point?).
I also heard something about two range finders failing and NASA's NDL instrument being used instead of them to support landing? This isn't an indication of a larger problem per se, but it does require changing the flight software late in the game, as well as having to use two new body-relative vectors (the line of sight vectors from two of the three NDL beams) to correctly recover altitude from slant range measurements.
Not knowing, at this time, anything specific about how anything during the entire descent went, I did hear calls for the pitch over manoeuvre, an indication of 1km altitude from NDL measurements, and a roll manoeuvre of at least 8deg at 30m altitude. Depending on which angle is roll (is it the angle around the thrust axis?), the last point might be only slightly or very worrying. A rotation about the thrust axis may "just" contribute to degrade communications, whereas a rotation about any of the two other axes at this altitude may cause undesirable lateral velocities at a critical time.
In any case, what I thought was stranger happened later. The IM-1 signal was quite faint after landing, although it was picked up by a 20m station in Bochum (https://twitter.com/amsatdl/status/1760827687596102054). About two hours after the planned landing time, IM claimed on Twitter not just that the lander was upright but that the communications problems had been solved and they were attempting to download images from the lander (https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1760838333851148442) - and then had nothing else to say over the next 8h (and counting). The landing area is surrounded by quite dramatic topography, and close to the lunar south pole where the Earth never rises very high above the lunar horizon... so this is maybe an indication that if we're going to seriously explore and then settle in this area, we might need relay satellites...
But then again, now it's been 11h and we still don't have any other information that can definitively demonstrate that either a successful landing took place, or that the vehicle is still alive. How long will batteries last, and how likely is it that the solar panels are generating power where they've landed? IM would be the first to know that it is in their interest to inform the public of what's occurred as quickly as possible (given that they're a public company).
So... all in all, I'd say... Looks like they might have done it, but let's have more data before we can say how much in shape they are.
Having heard nothing for such a long period of time is VERY strange indeed! It doesn´t look promising I am afraid.
I think this is a text book example of bad PR. Unfortunately.
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Having heard nothing for such a long period of time is VERY strange indeed! It doesn´t look promising I am afraid.
I think this is a text book example of bad PR. Unfortunately.
SLIM situation was way worse. The Japanese refused to release their photos for almost a week.
While I'm not a huge fan of how Intuitive Machines distribute their information, they're doing it well. We got accustomed to the fact they're mostly publishing official updates at the end of the day. It's still too early today. They never published updates that early.
The only thing I really hope is that the images aren't gated behind press conferences. This is a bad practice that started immediately post Curiosity landing, when people made videos out of compilations before the scientists had to say their words.
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8 deg deviation means that a radio wave misses Earth's limb by about 50000 km (30000 mi).
Are there any space assets capable of picking up and relaying such a signal?
FWIW, assuming the reported roll is roughly in the East-West direction, and with a bit of help by lunar libration, this would bring it at least temporarily close to the geostationary ring.
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https://twitter.com/int_machines/status/1761032731729739804
Lunar Surface Day One Update (23FEB2024 0818 CST)
Odysseus is alive and well. Flight controllers are communicating and commanding the vehicle to download science data. The lander has good telemetry and solar charging.
We continue to learn more about the vehicle’s specific information (Lat/Lon), overall health, and attitude (orientation). Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus will participate in a press conference later today to discuss this historic moment. Press conference information will be coordinated with NASA and published shortly.
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.. no info about pictures...
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.. no info about pictures...
That's what the press conference will be for (presumably).
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Having heard nothing for such a long period of time is VERY strange indeed! It doesn´t look promising I am afraid.
I think this is a text book example of bad PR. Unfortunately.
SLIM situation was way worse. The Japanese refused to release their photos for almost a week.
While I'm not a huge fan of how Intuitive Machines distribute their information, they're doing it well. We got accustomed to the fact they're mostly publishing official updates at the end of the day. It's still too early today. They never published updates that early.
The only thing I really hope is that the images aren't gated behind press conferences. This is a bad practice that started immediately post Curiosity landing, when people made videos out of compilations before the scientists had to say their words.
IIRC the JAXA team prioritized downlinking descent and landing engineering data back then; I would not be surprised it took them a few days to get to processing the photos taken by the little ball rover. The scientific camera didn't really work for long during the immediate post-landing hours.
Back on topic, it's curious that "Latitude/Longitude, overall health, and attitude/orientation" are the specific things singled out to be discussed in the upcoming press briefing. I guess at least some of them are not quite where the team wanted the lander to be...
EDIT:
.. no info about pictures...
That's what the press conference will be for (presumably).
We might have them soon: https://twitter.com/SpaceTechLab/status/1761026675318350249
The EagleCam team is receiving telemetry and are working through next steps with @Int_Machines Mission Control, Stay tuned! #ERAUtotheMoon #EagleCam
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Any word on whether we only have the low-bandwidth telemetry signal?
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Any word on whether we only have the low-bandwidth telemetry signal?
The release from the imaging team suggests strongly that the bandwidth is good enough for camera data to be available in a quality suitable for processing.
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I need a clarification...
Are all the available data/news being entered into this thread or are there also some in L2?
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https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-intuitive-machines-to-discuss-historic-moon-mission-today/ (https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-intuitive-machines-to-discuss-historic-moon-mission-today/)
NASA, Intuitive Machines to Discuss Historic Moon Mission Today
NASA and Intuitive Machines will host a televised news conference at 5 p.m. EST Friday, Feb. 23 (=22:00 UTC), to detail the Odysseus lander’s historic soft Moon landing.
With the last-minute assistance of a NASA precision landing technology, the first CLPS, or Commercial Lunar Payload Services, mission carrying the agency’s science and technology demonstrations successfully landed on the Moon at 6:23 p.m. on Feb. 22.
This mission is the first U.S. soft landing on the Moon in more than 50 years. Flight controllers are communicating and commanding the lander, which is solar charging and has good telemetry.
The news conference will air on NASA+, NASA Television, and the agency’s website. Learn how to stream NASA TV on a variety of platforms including social media.
Participants in the news conference include:
Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for Exploration, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington
Prasun Desai, deputy associate administrator, Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters
Steve Altemus, chief executive officer and co-founder, Intuitive Machines
Tim Crain, chief technology officer and co-founder, Intuitive Machines
This event is virtual only. To ask questions during the news conference, media must RSVP to the NASA newsroom no later than two hours before the start of the call to: [email protected].
For more information about the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, visit:
https://www.nasa.gov/clps
-end-
Cheryl Warner / Karen Fox
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1100
[email protected] / [email protected]
Nilufar Ramji / Laura Sorto
Johnson Space Center, Houston
281-483-5111
[email protected] / [email protected]
Josh Marshall
Intuitive Machines, Houston
[email protected]
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https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-intuitive-machines-to-discuss-historic-moon-mission-today/ (https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-intuitive-machines-to-discuss-historic-moon-mission-today/)
NASA, Intuitive Machines to Discuss Historic Moon Mission Today
NASA and Intuitive Machines will host a televised news conference at 5 p.m. EST Friday, Feb. 23 (=22:00 UTC), to detail the Odysseus lander’s historic soft Moon landing.
A Friday 5pm press conference is never good news...
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And again... the dreaded word starting with P hasn't been mentioned once again.
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https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-intuitive-machines-to-discuss-historic-moon-mission-today/ (https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-intuitive-machines-to-discuss-historic-moon-mission-today/)
NASA, Intuitive Machines to Discuss Historic Moon Mission Today
NASA and Intuitive Machines will host a televised news conference at 5 p.m. EST Friday, Feb. 23 (=22:00 UTC), to detail the Odysseus lander’s historic soft Moon landing.
A Friday 5pm press conference is never good news...
1Remember that’s 3PM in Houston where IM is controlling the lander
2 There’s another case of time zone confusion where NASA lists the landing in EST without specifying it. (I maintain that any discussion of the landing begin one hour earlier or later is a time zone issue.)
3 Do we need a meta thread to keep this one on status, data, and images while it collects all discussions of the webcast quality, Nelson’s timing, graphics issues (SHOW ME THE DAMNED DATA!), fear mongering, hair splitting, and record parsing?
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWEwR8fscFY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWEwR8fscFY)
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https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-intuitive-machines-to-discuss-historic-moon-mission-today/ (https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-intuitive-machines-to-discuss-historic-moon-mission-today/)
NASA, Intuitive Machines to Discuss Historic Moon Mission Today
NASA and Intuitive Machines will host a televised news conference at 5 p.m. EST Friday, Feb. 23 (=22:00 UTC), to detail the Odysseus lander’s historic soft Moon landing.
A Friday 5pm press conference is never good news...
1Remember that’s 3PM in Houston where IM is controlling the lander
2 There’s another case of time zone confusion where NASA lists the landing in EST without specifying it. (I maintain that any discussion of the landing begin one hour earlier or later is a time zone issue.)
3 Do we need a meta thread to keep this one on status, data, and images while it collects all discussions of the webcast quality, Nelson’s timing, graphics issues (SHOW ME THE DAMNED DATA!), fear mongering, hair splitting, and record parsing?
Not to be pedantic, but that's 4:00 PM (16:00) in Houston.
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https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-intuitive-machines-to-discuss-historic-moon-mission-today/ (https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-intuitive-machines-to-discuss-historic-moon-mission-today/)
NASA, Intuitive Machines to Discuss Historic Moon Mission Today
NASA and Intuitive Machines will host a televised news conference at 5 p.m. EST Friday, Feb. 23 (=22:00 UTC), to detail the Odysseus lander’s historic soft Moon landing.
A Friday 5pm press conference is never good news...
Don't worry be happy:
https://twitter.com/amsatdl
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Isn't there a bit too much angst and impatience in this thread?
Let's just chill and await the news coming out of the presser.
It is infinitely better to have a mission to talk about than having nothing at all, so how about showing some positivity and give a well-deserved break to the Intuitive Machines team which probably hasn't been sleeping for the last 48 hours.
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Isn't there a bit too much angst and impatience in this thread?
Let's just chill and await the news coming out of the presser.
It is infinitely better to have a mission to talk about than having nothing at all, so how about showing some positivity and give a well-deserved break to the Intuitive Machines team which probably hasn't been sleeping for the last 48 hours.
Agreed, seems like a lot of anxiety. Probably because of how many failures have happened landing on the moon recently.
It only landed yesterday folks, no need to dread a Friday afternoon presser.
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A link to new livestream of a different receiver from Bochum Observatory.
They had a steady signal for about an hour, better than I'd seen anywhere previously, until, of course, it utterly disappeared the second I went to post this. If you scrub back a little over five minutes, you'll see it. (Edit: the signal is back.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56k6KI2zZFQ
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Note that even if they're stuck communicating at 160 B/s, that could still pull down a 300 KB "good enough for a press conference" jpeg in 32 minutes. There may be other factors at play, of course.
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For those waiting for EagleCame data:
Due to complications with Odysseus’ internal navigation system — specifically concerning the software patch to navigation data to include NASA’s NDL (Navigation Doppler Lidar) payload, which is meant to ensure a soft landing — the decision was made to power down EagleCam during landing and not deploy the device during Odysseus’ final descent.
However, both the Intuitive Machines and EagleCam teams still plan to deploy EagleCam and capture images of the lander on the lunar surface as the mission continues.
The time of deployment is currently unknown.
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So... no EagleCam photos this evening. I don't know if I should hope for any images... It's so disappointing one day later nothing has been published despite being reassured that it's "in excellent health".
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https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-intuitive-machines-to-discuss-historic-moon-mission-today/ (https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-intuitive-machines-to-discuss-historic-moon-mission-today/)
NASA, Intuitive Machines to Discuss Historic Moon Mission Today
NASA and Intuitive Machines will host a televised news conference at 5 p.m. EST Friday, Feb. 23 (=22:00 UTC), to detail the Odysseus lander’s historic soft Moon landing.
A Friday 5pm press conference is never good news...
I don't know about that, they are probabaly just waiting to have enough news to be able to answer some of the questions.
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LRO is going to pass over the landing area in daylight late on the 24th, and because of the near-polar site it will be close enough for off-nadir imaging on many orbits around that time. We should get something fairly quickly. Don't hold your breath for Chandrayaan 2's OHRC - even if it takes an image it could be months before it is released. As far as I know we still don't have an OHRC image of SLIM (if it's on the ground it has not been released).
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LRO is going to pass over the landing area in daylight late on the 24th, and because of the near-polar site it will be close enough for off-nadir imaging on many orbits around that time. We should get something fairly quickly. Don't hold your breath for Chandrayaan 2's OHRC - even if it takes an image it could be months before it is released. As far as I know we still don't have an OHRC image of SLIM (if it's on the ground it has not been released).
I've been thinking about LRO. Can it function as a relay?
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LRO is going to pass over the landing area in daylight late on the 24th, and because of the near-polar site it will be close enough for off-nadir imaging on many orbits around that time. We should get something fairly quickly. Don't hold your breath for Chandrayaan 2's OHRC - even if it takes an image it could be months before it is released. As far as I know we still don't have an OHRC image of SLIM (if it's on the ground it has not been released).
I've been thinking about LRO. Can it function as a relay?
Unlike the Mars orbiters for last 20 years, I don't think relays were a thought for LRO. However, with the right software patches and given how Cassini talked to Huygens with just its High Gain Antenna, I would think it could be possible. My guess is probably not, but the engineers here could give better opinions.
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Isn't there a bit too much angst and impatience in this thread?
Let's just chill and await the news coming out of the presser.
It is infinitely better to have a mission to talk about than having nothing at all, so how about showing some positivity and give a well-deserved break to the Intuitive Machines team which probably hasn't been sleeping for the last 48 hours.
While I admit I do get overly emotional and angry when there's no timely release of images and I'm famous for that, we have to differentiate between emotions and rational discussions. Because people on Twitter has asked good questions that deserve to have answers.
I do respect and admire IM for performing a soft landing on the Moon. Congratulations. However during the past 12 months we saw three landing attemps - of India's Chandrayaan-3, of JAXA's SLIM mission and now of Intuitive Machines IM-1 mission.
Out of these, IM-1 broadcast was objectively the worst one. And people have noticed that. Chandrayaan-3 relayed a live video. One of the readers on Twitter reminded us that not only we saw a video, we had a photo from the Moon four hours later. SLIM didn't relay a live video. But we had a nice CGI with telemetry data.
During the IM landing we had a clock. And it was not entirely accurate, to be fair. Remember - this was the first US landing since the end of the Apollo era, it generated a huge interest (and it was expected to be shows)... and we were shown ...a clock?
The lack of images almost one whole day post-landing is also a concerning issue. Why? Have such images been taken? If no, why? Is it a technical problem, despite being reassured the lander is healthy? Is it a communications issue? Is there something IM isn't telling us - just as they didn't told us about the LiDAR problem before the live broadcast? People have noticed that.
If yes, why have they not been released? Is it a decision of the company? Is it a decision of NASA? If it's a NASA decision, have they asked them not to released the images before the press-conference? If so, why? Do they still suffer form post-Curiosity scare, when enthusiasts made videos and scientists from now on were afraid they would be scooped? (which is exactly the reason why we didn't have images after the landing of Perseverance).
If so, what would prevent NASA from gating images behind press conferences when Artemis 3/4 begins? How will they assure us that there will be a live broadcast of the historical moonwalks?
These are all good questions people ask. Not all Twitter users are conspiracy nutjobs, so get off the high horse and let's see if these questions will have valid answers this evening.
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I wonder if there was a miscommunication about the Eaglecam too. I be surprised if they would have posted this if they knew it had been turned off during landing.
The EagleCam team is receiving telemetry and are working through next steps with @Int_Machines Mission Control, Stay tuned! #ERAUtotheMoon #EagleCam
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"Do they still suffer form post-Curiosity scare, when enthusiasts made videos and scientists from now on were afraid they would be scooped? (which is exactly the reason why we didn't have images after the landing of Perseverance)."
We did have images from Perseverance after landing. Thumbnail Hazcams within 5 minutes of landing, full versions within hours, and the next day descent images and other views at a press conference. The Nav and Mast cameras were downlinking as soon as the imaging mast was deployed. I just reviewed the post-landing thread on www.unmannedspaceflight.com to confirm this.
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These are all good questions people ask. Not all Twitter users are conspiracy nutjobs, so get off the high horse and let's see if these questions will have valid answers this evening.
They don't have to answer the questions. You are entitled to nothing.
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"Do they still suffer form post-Curiosity scare, when enthusiasts made videos and scientists from now on were afraid they would be scooped? (which is exactly the reason why we didn't have images after the landing of Perseverance)."
We did have images from Perseverance after landing. Thumbnail Hazcams within 5 minutes of landing, full versions within hours, and the next day descent images and other views at a press conference. The Nav and Mast cameras were downlinking as soon as the imaging mast was deployed. I just reviewed the post-landing thread on www.unmannedspaceflight.com to confirm this.
No, here's the story as I wrote about it in 2021:
https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4128/1
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As much as I appreciate your attempt to have a rational discussion, I find most of the questions that you ask to be, basically, "Why wasn't the primary goal of this mission to entertain me?"
Why didn't you get live video of the landing? Perhaps this mission didn't have the mass budget, or the money, to put live cameras on the lander facing the ground as well as the RF resources to to stream video in real time.
Why didn't anyone deliver pictures from the lander to you? Why hasn't anyone shared all the technical problem solving that has been occurring over the last 18 hours with you, including up-to-the moment status? Possibly there was no money for a full-time PR person to manage the flow of information to a website, or possibly everyone involved in the program is either sleeping after putting in 48 hours of work, or is working on the mission.
In the USA, this was pretty much a ho-hum story. It had little coverage before touchdown, and small coverage afterwards. It was NOT an Apollo landing, it was NOT a Mars rover landing. It did NOT have any particular significance to the man in the street; if you asked one of them, they'd probably tell you that we have been landing rovers on the moon for decades, so what's the big deal?
And nobody "deserves" to have answers at this point in the mission other than the program managers at NASA. The mission owes you nothing, but as a government organization NASA owes a report on mission at some point - and my understanding is that point is the news conference scheduled for today.
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LUNAR NODE 1 talking on DSN now?
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First,,congratulations to the team that accomplished this,,second,,,they are a relatively new company, and a small one at that..their public relations are not the best, but the material in the form of the press kit professionally done, lets have a little patience and see what comes at the 5pm press breifing,,,,NASA tv and website will broadcast it.
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Note that even if they're stuck communicating at 160 B/s, that could still pull down a 300 KB "good enough for a press conference" jpeg in 32 minutes. There may be other factors at play, of course.
Oh cool, how do you know the bitrate, did you calculate it using the available specs or did they publish it somewhere? (I'm pretty new to spaceflight watching!)
Additionally, the announcement that EagleCam was not deployed is a little confusing to me, why would EARU announce they had received telemetry in morning eastern time if they announced a few hours later it wasn't deployed. Would IM not have notified them when they made the decision before descent? And how does using the Doppler LIDAR necessitate not using the EagleCam, maybe a power concern? Or not wanting footage available of the lander "hard landing"?
I imagine the answer is going to be "we don't know" but again I'm new to this and I'd really appreciate any insight.
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As much as I appreciate your attempt to have a rational discussion, I find most of the questions that you ask to be, basically, "Why wasn't the primary goal of this mission to entertain me?"
Why didn't you get live video of the landing? Perhaps this mission didn't have the mass budget, or the money, to put live cameras on the lander facing the ground as well as the RF resources to to stream video in real time.
Why didn't anyone deliver pictures from the lander to you? Why hasn't anyone shared all the technical problem solving that has been occurring over the last 18 hours with you, including up-to-the moment status? Possibly there was no money for a full-time PR person to manage the flow of information to a website, or possibly everyone involved in the program is either sleeping after putting in 48 hours of work, or is working on the mission.
In the USA, this was pretty much a ho-hum story. It had little coverage before touchdown, and small coverage afterwards. It was NOT an Apollo landing, it was NOT a Mars rover landing. It did NOT have any particular significance to the man in the street; if you asked one of them, they'd probably tell you that we have been landing rovers on the moon for decades, so what's the big deal?
And nobody "deserves" to have answers at this point in the mission other than the program managers at NASA. The mission owes you nothing, but as a government organization NASA owes a report on mission at some point - and my understanding is that point is the news conference scheduled for today.
I understand your point of view. Unfortunately, continuing this discussion goes beyond the scope of this forum. I've written about this subject in my article here: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/3052/1 . And this is all I can do. I presume you'll disagree with me, just as I disagree with you. There's nothing more I could add except for what I've already written there. I haven't changed my thoughts on this subject (though I have on other issues).
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Isn't there a bit too much angst and impatience in this thread? Let's just chill and await the news coming out of the presser.
Again, would it be possible to time-shift the 1000+ word hand-wringing posts, and their quotes in subsequent replies, to after the press conference in two hours when everything will be a lot clearer? Especially from the people helicoptering into here and not even bothering to read that last couple pages before giving us their thoughts. (and thanks to the many people following this thread who are NOT chiming in with their armchair opinions)
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LUNAR NODE 1 talking on DSN now?
It cut off before I could screenshot, but it listed power received as -120 dBm.
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Details of the story about recovering from loss of the primary lidar should be fascinating. In theory could IM-1 have landed "in the blind" (i.e. without any lidar guidance) using e.g. IMU data?
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It just confirms how difficult this moon landing stuff is from multiple failures (both big and small) over multiple vehicles.
I am confident that eventually this will become as routine as the Falcon 9 launches and landings have become.
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As much as I appreciate your attempt to have a rational discussion, I find most of the questions that you ask to be, basically, "Why wasn't the primary goal of this mission to entertain me?"
Why didn't you get live video of the landing? Perhaps this mission didn't have the mass budget, or the money, to put live cameras on the lander facing the ground as well as the RF resources to to stream video in real time.
Why didn't anyone deliver pictures from the lander to you? Why hasn't anyone shared all the technical problem solving that has been occurring over the last 18 hours with you, including up-to-the moment status? Possibly there was no money for a full-time PR person to manage the flow of information to a website, or possibly everyone involved in the program is either sleeping after putting in 48 hours of work, or is working on the mission.
In the USA, this was pretty much a ho-hum story. It had little coverage before touchdown, and small coverage afterwards. It was NOT an Apollo landing, it was NOT a Mars rover landing. It did NOT have any particular significance to the man in the street; if you asked one of them, they'd probably tell you that we have been landing rovers on the moon for decades, so what's the big deal?
And nobody "deserves" to have answers at this point in the mission other than the program managers at NASA. The mission owes you nothing, but as a government organization NASA owes a report on mission at some point - and my understanding is that point is the news conference scheduled for today.
I was suprised by this but it was actually covered live by CNN.
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Big signal from Bochum right now at 2256.32MHz. Might be Lunar Node 1.
Edit: never mind, they did an off-point test and it's not from the moon.
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In theory could IM-1 have landed "in the blind" (i.e. without any lidar guidance) using e.g. IMU data?
Unlikely. The drift in IMU knowledge of either vertical or horizontal velocity at touchdown would have been greater than the lander can handle (we're talking of an order of 1 m/s), and it doesn't even have to be the IMU's fault - even slight inaccuracies in the state vector at PDI ignition could result in errors too large for the system to handle. Even lunar mascons could play an effect on the trajectory and where the lander *thinks* it is.
You really need something to gauge the distance to the ground and lateral velocity reliably in the landing endgame, whether it be radar, lidar or Mark 1 eyeballs (these are probably only good for lateral velocity, though), IMHO.
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In theory could IM-1 have landed "in the blind" (i.e. without any lidar guidance) using e.g. IMU data?
No. They wouldn't have known where the ground was (onboard-based altitude knowledge can be up to several hundred metres if only determined through dead reckoning, or even more by the late stages in powered descent), and something similar to ispace is likely to happen (in practice, ispace's lander ignored radar data when it was critical that it didn't).
Typically, range finders or altimeters are used to determine altitude, and a doppler radar or a visual TRN system is required to accurately determine lateral velocity to avoid toppling over or worse. Both of these are essential for a soft landing.
Btw: NASA's NDL, although experimental in this mission, is a relatively mass-efficient instrument (a few kg) that provides three independent measurements of altitude and doppler, which means a good knowledge of altitude, terrain-relative velocity and (if above a flat surface) terrain-relative attitude. It will probably will become the norm in the near-future for lunar landing.
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These are all good questions people ask. Not all Twitter users are conspiracy nutjobs, so get off the high horse and let's see if these questions will have valid answers this evening.
They don't have to answer the questions. You are entitled to nothing.
That's the proper attitude! Of course there is taxpayer money paying for this, NASA reputation and accountability on the line and trying to get some interest and funding for space, but your 1970´s Soviet Union transparency and accountability sure is one way to go.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWEwR8fscFY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWEwR8fscFY)
live in 8 minures.
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These are all good questions people ask. Not all Twitter users are conspiracy nutjobs, so get off the high horse and let's see if these questions will have valid answers this evening.
They don't have to answer the questions. You are entitled to nothing.
That's the proper attitude! Of course there is taxpayer money paying for this, NASA reputation and accountability on the line and trying to get some interest and funding for space, but your 1970´s Soviet Union transparency and accountability sure is one way to go.
He meant Intuitive Machines, not NASA. His point is that there is no requirement to have live-up to date, minute by minute information.
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Presser starting now.
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These are all good questions people ask. Not all Twitter users are conspiracy nutjobs, so get off the high horse and let's see if these questions will have valid answers this evening.
They don't have to answer the questions. You are entitled to nothing.
That's the proper attitude! Of course there is taxpayer money paying for this, NASA reputation and accountability on the line and trying to get some interest and funding for space, but your 1970´s Soviet Union transparency and accountability sure is one way to go.
To paraphrase Jim: This is a private company, so "They don't have to answer the questions. You are entitled to nothing."
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Hoping to get pictures this weekend from LRO to pinpoint location.
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Landed on it's side
https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx4_PsEleQQGUhA6Tn-95jSdGeRty3J4lk?si=tj_ZNBv7hRV9XB4B
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"Soft Land" (?)
Not upright as originally claimed.
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and this is how they determine that LM-1 is on its side.
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxiGV4cMy2-s325oZ-iPfcIG7jA9r6VSv3?si=7nsI3EnBGxR8Y67K
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is it a press conference or an advertisement???
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https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1761151931626492028
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Company stock price also tipped over... by about -30%. Recovered slightly, but investors are not exactly happy hearing this. Does not look like they count this as a great success.
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https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-intuitive-machines-to-discuss-historic-moon-mission-today/ (https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-intuitive-machines-to-discuss-historic-moon-mission-today/)
NASA, Intuitive Machines to Discuss Historic Moon Mission Today
NASA and Intuitive Machines will host a televised news conference at 5 p.m. EST Friday, Feb. 23 (=22:00 UTC), to detail the Odysseus lander’s historic soft Moon landing.
A Friday 5pm press conference is never good news...
I don't know about that, they are probabaly just waiting to have enough news to be able to answer some of the questions.
SLIM engineers this afternoon.....
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Landed on it's side
https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx4_PsEleQQGUhA6Tn-95jSdGeRty3J4lk?si=tj_ZNBv7hRV9XB4B
It's amazing that Surveyor managed to stick 5 out of 7 in the 1960's !!
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"Success" is doing HEAVY lifting in this press conference.
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https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1761152755849179136
The good news is that if you look to the left of the lander, it appears to have found large deposits of water in the plastically shadowed region of the moon.
;) ;) ;)
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What in the trade space makes a telephone booth shape more attractive than a bed mattress shape?
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These are all good questions people ask. Not all Twitter users are conspiracy nutjobs, so get off the high horse and let's see if these questions will have valid answers this evening.
They don't have to answer the questions. You are entitled to nothing.
That's the proper attitude! Of course there is taxpayer money paying for this, NASA reputation and accountability on the line and trying to get some interest and funding for space, but your 1970´s Soviet Union transparency and accountability sure is one way to go.
To paraphrase Jim: This is a private company, so "They don't have to answer the questions. You are entitled to nothing."
They are not entitled to my money...
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Reprogramming the nav involved a "sporty" reboot.
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TVC linkage not as modeled.
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What in the trade space makes a telephone booth shape more attractive than a bed mattress shape?
It's a lot easier to fit in a payload fairing.
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Landed on it's side
https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx4_PsEleQQGUhA6Tn-95jSdGeRty3J4lk?si=tj_ZNBv7hRV9XB4B
It's amazing that Surveyor managed to stick 5 out of 7 in the 1960's !!
The center of gravity of IM-1 is too high (IMHO).
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Funny how two landers from two different countries have both ended up on their side in just over the span of a month.
I don't think there's cause for concern on Intuitive Machine's part. They've already done better than ispace and Astrobotic insofar that they've gotten functional hardware on the lunar surface, and (unlike Astrobotic) they'll have a much easier time correcting these issues through iteration of the lander design. It'll be a different story if IM-2 goes worse, but given the lessons learned on this mission I highly doubt that'll happen.
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While I applaud an intact landing, I have to facepalm when spacecraft go sideways...
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This image was shown early in the presentation. Schomberger crater northeast of the landing site, and the surface north of Shomberger.
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Funny how two landers from two different countries have both ended up on their side in just over the span of a month.
I don't think there's cause for concern on Intuitive Machine's part. They've already done better than ispace and Astrobotic insofar that they've gotten functional hardware on the lunar surface, and (unlike Astrobotic) they'll have a much easier time correcting these issues through iteration of the lander design. It'll be a different story if IM-2 goes worse, but given the lessons learned on this mission I highly doubt that'll happen.
Yeah I think they will probably have enough data to fix the problems they ran into. Just getting there and not destroying the thing on a first attempt is a solid win IMO.
I'm wondering if they shouldn't have aimed for the south pole on a first attempt as well. Closer to center disk may have made the post landing comms situation a little easier but idk.
Sent from my SM-S911U using Tapatalk
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Oh, and by the way - here's a pic.
THE pic.
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Downward facing payload is the passive art cube.
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Downward facing payload is the passive art cube.
Probably the best-case scenario for a sideways lander. Not much value lost there.
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There is a chance, I guess, that the EagleCam recorded what happened during landing.
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What in the trade space makes a telephone booth shape more attractive than a bed mattress shape?
It's a lot easier to fit in a payload fairing.
It has a lot of space for a wider design, it's the fixed legs that limited the faring size and they didn't want to increase additional SPF issues by adding complexities of extending a set of folded legs with the potential of tipping over on it side, like it did anyway.
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Prop temp sensor was reporting colder than expected. Used RFMG to verify this wasn't caused by a leak.
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Downward facing payload is the passive art cube.
Wow that was lucky!
I do wonder if EagleCam will still be able to get photo of the lander? I guess it depends which side it is on and the angle it will get shot out.
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There is a chance, I guess, that the EagleCam recorded what happened during landing.
No, they already said it was turned off and was not separated during landing.
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I'd hate to see what they consider an unsuccessful landing.
Has no one asked about the communication going forward? How many bits/second can they get from it?
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LOI: some difficulty with comms. Lost carrier lock when watching from some ground stations. LO was elliptical. Too close to south pole. Raised perilune. The orbit correction eliminated the need for the descent injection burn.
Safety enable switch had not been enabled. Error in ground processing. Laser range finders could not be turned on remotely.
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Oh God, they forgot to turn off the eye safety switch on the laser range finders! Somewhat embarrassing.
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I'd hate to see what they consider an unsuccessful landing.
Has no one asked about the communication going forward? How many bits/second can they get from it?
An unsuccessful landing means it slams into the surface and explodes with no communication at all. That was well within the possible outcomes of course
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did I hear correctly? they forgot removing dust cover from lidar before launch?
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I'd hate to see what they consider an unsuccessful landing.
Why so much snark about the landing? - they are absolutely in their right to call it succesful in so far as the lander is operational right now. This was not a crash, it wasn't blown to smithereens. It is up there communicating and at full power.
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Grush asked about damage.
Hopeful top deck solar array not damaged.
Houston Chronicle reporter asks about lidar and roll maneuver and comms issues after landing.
Into position for initial landing, worked through procedure for shutdown and reboot on ground flat-sat. Once-around approach ("abort once around") gave high confidence of success.
Fixed antenna required landing orientation. Planned roll maneuver to face antennae towards Earth.
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To bad they can't run the cold-gas thrusters and set the lander upright again :(
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I must admit that when I saw the lander for the first time, I though 'wow, that's tall'. It's over 4m high, with a leg span maybe two thirds of that. Any sideways movement vector upon landing would always be risky.
All the previous successful landers always looked... well, squat. Keeping a low centre of gravity and all. With very wide legs. That seemed to make sense. The Apollo landers were about 7m high with a leg span of 9.5m.
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I'm gonna be honest: I appreciate that they're taking the situation in stride. They know the outcome wasn't ideal, but frankly they seem happy to have landed at all which is totally fair. Using the little Nova-C model to show the assumed position of the lander was a cute touch as well.
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Why so much snark about the landing? - they are absolutely in their right to call it succesful in so far as the lander is operational right now. This was not a crash, it wasn't blown to smithereens. It is up there communicating and at full power.
They told us 24 hours ago that the lander was "upright". It isn't. Creates doubt.
Good for them to get this lander to and on the Moon. Much to applaud. But lander tipped over is not a "success". No matter how many times they say the word.
- Ed Kyle
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Davenport asks when they knew the lidar wasn't available.
When we went around the night before and made the first laser range measurement it looked like there was a measurement but morning of landing determined there was no software driven means to enable it.
Crane suggested plumbing high and low beam NDL range data into guidance. Was already in "shadow mode" so data was available. Delayed one orbit to implement the shift.
Crain: "It sounds easy in retrospect." Two navigation pods on vehicle had optimal angles. NDL angle optimized to test sensor. Quickly implemented attitude/location transformations. "This is the kind of thing that would have taken a month" in normal sw development. Basically did it in an hour and a half.
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As far as I am concerned. This is mostly a failed first Lunar landing attempt by Intuitive Machines. Will not matter in the long run, if their next (and fiscally doable final) attempt is more successful.
Unlike some posters here. Think the lack of photos and videos during the landing attempt is really bad PR. The days of media people reading out a press release about what happen is long gone. General public interest in a mission requires high quality video presentations of the phases of the mission and the actual event itself to be sustainable, IMO.
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Why so much snark about the landing? - they are absolutely in their right to call it succesful in so far as the lander is operational right now. This was not a crash, it wasn't blown to smithereens. It is up there communicating and at full power.
They told us 24 hours ago that the lander was "upright". It isn't.
Good for them to get this lander to and on the Moon. Much to applaud. But lander tipped over is not a "success". No matter how many times they say the word.
- Ed Kyle
They thought it was upright based on the fact that it was alive and transmitting. They later realised it was lying on it's side, based on fuel sensor readings.
That is not a lie, that is just being wrong. It happens to everybody, except to some forum members in here.
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I must admit that when I saw the lander for the first time, I though 'wow, that's tall'. It's over 4m high, with a leg span maybe two thirds of that. Any sideways movement vector upon landing would always be risky.
All the previous successful landers always looked... well, squat. Keeping a low centre of gravity and all. With very wide legs. That seemed to make sense. The Apollo landers were about 7m high with a leg span of 9.5m.
I agree, now with starship HLS and blue moon being top heavy It is much more likely to tip over.
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Berger from Ars: cryo boiloff and how much prop at end. data transfer rate vs orig expectation.
Cryogens did very well. System doesn't really have boiloff; tanks are rated for pressure. Insulation and isolation provided thermal protection "very well." Used more helium than expected; ran low.
Bandwidth question difficult to answer. Fault-tolerant restarts if lacking heartbeat. Trying to get out of that flight config and stay locked on two antennas. Beat frequency timing. Just about have it solved.
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Why so much snark about the landing? - they are absolutely in their right to call it succesful in so far as the lander is operational right now. This was not a crash, it wasn't blown to smithereens. It is up there communicating and at full power.
They told us 24 hours ago that the lander was "upright". It isn't.
Good for them to get this lander to and on the Moon. Much to applaud. But lander tipped over is not a "success". No matter how many times they say the word.
- Ed Kyle
did they also say that they confused the accelerometer telemetry in first instance hence thinking lander was upright? English is not my native language, I'm hearing strange things during this advert-conference, but maybe it's me.
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Everything else aside I'd say IM is showing a lot of transparency and technical detail, despite having only partial information. At the end of the day it's a pretty small company taking a literal moonshot. Comparing them to actual national space agencies and SpaceX isn't entirely fair.
Also interesting comments about 0-boiloff in their cryogen tanks. Did they have active chillers?
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Why so much snark about the landing? - they are absolutely in their right to call it succesful in so far as the lander is operational right now. This was not a crash, it wasn't blown to smithereens. It is up there communicating and at full power.
They told us 24 hours ago that the lander was "upright". It isn't.
Good for them to get this lander to and on the Moon. Much to applaud. But lander tipped over is not a "success". No matter how many times they say the word.
- Ed Kyle
They thought it was upright based on the fact that it was alive and transmitting. They later realised it was lying it's side, based on fuel sensor readings.
That is not a lie, that is just being wrong. It happens to everybody, except to some forum members in here.
I'm not particularly convinced of this timelines of the event considering the evolution of the $LUNR stock these past 24 hours.
Anyway, congratulation to Intuitive machines!
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Foust question: best guess at what data rate they're hoping for, and best guess for location accuracy.
Expect to get "most" of the mission data down. W/only standard navigation sensors on board, 4-5 km accuracy. Optical measurements looked better on scopes than sims. 2-3 km accuracy on landing.
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Did we get any answers as to whether there will be photos coming down, and if yes, when?
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As far as I am concerned. This is mostly a failed first Lunar landing attempt by Intuitive Machines. Will not matter in the long run, if their next (and fiscally doable final) attempt is more successful.
Unlike some posters here. Think the lack of photos and videos during the landing attempt is really bad PR. The days of media people reading out a press release about what happen is long gone. General public interest in a mission requires high quality video presentations of the phases of the mission and the actual event itself to be sustainable, IMO.
Considering how Astrobotic looks right now, IM is considerably better off. At least IM's lander actually made it.
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Roulette asks about orientation on surface.
Panel E is down-facing. All others exposed to outside. Some antennas pointed towards surface, limiting data availability.
Top deck was at 30 deg angle due to south pole landing site. Unknown effects.
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Did we get any answers as to whether there will be photos coming down, and if yes, when?
They want to get pictures, not sure about when, largely due to communication issues.
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About 10 per R/W/B teams plus "Team Four."
Team Four pulled in subject matter experts, working outside the control room. Called vendors e.g. MDA for range finders.
R/W/B teams and Team Four worked nearly around the clock. Collapsed into single team for final descent. 48 hour and 40 hour days.
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so, yesterday it was a full success with the lander being upright and EagleCam had supposedly worked. Now it turns out it fell over, EagleCam did not work and oh yes, they screwed up during launch processing (and only came clean after being asked).
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Did having to use the NDL instead of the intended sensors prevent the lander from nulling out the horizontal velocity on landing (and, thus, cause the craft to tip over)?
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It's commendable they decided to be transparent and told us the real reason about the LiDAR failure.
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So how do we classify this mission compared to others in recent years. How about:
- SLIM and Odysseus: Partial success.
- Chang'e 3-5, Chandrayaan 3: Full success
- Peregrine-1, Luna 25, Beresheet, Chandrayaan 2, Hakuto-R: Failures
I'm trying to put these in perspective for my museum visitors.
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Klotz for AvWeek: was it just serendipity that elliptical orbit caused check of lidar? When in nominal sequence would it have been activatated.
"Fortuitous" because we would not have arbitrarily activated the laser range finders prior to descent. Assumed they worked based on terrestrial testing. Low perilune caused activation... "a bit of luck for us."
Normally would have turned on about an hour before landing. Would have been 5 minutes before landing before detecting the issue.
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So how do we classify this mission compared to others in recent years. How about:
- SLIM and Odysseus: Partial success.
- Chang'e 3-5, Chandrayaan 3: Full success
- Peregrine-1, Luna 25, Beresheet, Chandrayaan 2, Hakuto-R: Failures
I'm trying to put these in perspective for my museum visitors.
Depends on if you're a glass half-empty or glass half-full type of person. Half-empty, 'Partial failure'. Half-full, 'Partial success'. Either works in this scenario.
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CNN Q re Eaglecam and any payloads from which haven't gotten data.
Eaglecam will be commanded, clear sd card and ejected. Not fired during landing due to nav system initialization would put a flag up for Eaglecam not to fire. Didn't have time to fix it after reboot.
Think we can meet all the commercial payload needs. Believe already have image of art cube.
For NASA science payloads, Kearn says still checking to see if measurements can't be made with some experiments.
No mention of PRIME-1/TRIDENT drill. (Not on this mission)
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WR Smith for SFN: given operability of NDL, will it be used on future systems, and particularly HLS.
For CLPS we don't prescribe what tech to use.
Same for HLS partners. Now that this has been shown to operationally work, will be "of great interest"
Already licensed tech to a small company for commercialization. Order of mag more accurate, half the power, half the mass of traditional, 1/3 the volume.
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The PRIME drill is on the second mission, not this one.
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so, yesterday it was a full success with the lander being upright and EagleCam had supposedly worked. Now it turns out it fell over, EagleCam did not work and oh yes, they screwed up during launch processing (and only came clean after being asked).
They said they were getting telemetry from EagleCam. At no point did they say it had been ejected.
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So how do we classify this mission compared to others in recent years. How about:
- SLIM and Odysseus: Partial success.
- Chang'e 3-5, Chandrayaan 3: Full success
- Peregrine-1, Luna 25, Beresheet, Chandrayaan 2, Hakuto-R: Failures
I'm trying to put these in perspective for my museum visitors.
For me, it comes down to:
Success - landed intact exactly as it was supposed to, all payloads working as intended, all data transmitted as intended.
Partial success - landed intact and transmitting, but payloads compromised, and/or data transmission compromised (immediately, or as mission progresses).
Failure - crashed, no data retrieved from surface.
Of course, you could look at it in other ways. But since it takes so much to actually get there and get a touchdown, touching down without crashing cannot be classed as a complete failure.
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The Astronomy Live video calculates orbital parameters for IM-1 that are very different from what Horizons shows, but I'm currently assuming those discrepancies are due to the small number of data points used, as the Bochum Observatory range data continues to match Horizons closely.
Yes, to be clear, my data is approximate due to the relatively few data points and the quick and dirty way I do the astrometry (sorry!). My objective was to determine the approximate orbit at least well enough to be able to get a simulated version of IM-1 to the moon in Orbiter Spaceflight Simulator using just my own observations (which I was able to do, though in a different southern crater - https://twitter.com/astroferg/status/1760520784039051595 ). I had planned for additional observations with my own personal telescope, but unfortunately it suffered a malfunction and will not power up.
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Marsha Smith, SP Online: communications problems, how much are they due to south polar location; lessons learned?
Phenomenon of interest at south pole: frequency multi-path condition/interference.
We're going to figure out an antenna location map that gives us an antenna pointed towards Earth while in transit.
Some dishes have had config issues and weaker power band. Power xmit levels were too low at times to keep carrier lock.
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As far as I am concerned. This is mostly a failed first Lunar landing attempt by Intuitive Machines. Will not matter in the long run, if their next (and fiscally doable final) attempt is more successful.
Unlike some posters here. Think the lack of photos and videos during the landing attempt is really bad PR. The days of media people reading out a press release about what happen is long gone. General public interest in a mission requires high quality video presentations of the phases of the mission and the actual event itself to be sustainable, IMO.
Considering how Astrobotic looks right now, IM is considerably better off. At least IM's lander actually made it.
Doesn't matter. The general public will likely not return to watch follow up coverage after the really mediocre landing attempt coverage.
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They said they were getting telemetry from EagleCam. At no point did they say it had been ejected.
okay, valid point. i must have associated the term telemetry for a successful sep.
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Adam with Science News: any idea how long lander might stay operational?
Approximately nine days til sunset. Eventually deep cold will mean electronics not expected to survive. O/c will see at lunar dawn if electronics made it through.
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As far as I am concerned. This is mostly a failed first Lunar landing attempt by Intuitive Machines. Will not matter in the long run, if their next (and fiscally doable final) attempt is more successful.
Unlike some posters here. Think the lack of photos and videos during the landing attempt is really bad PR. The days of media people reading out a press release about what happen is long gone. General public interest in a mission requires high quality video presentations of the phases of the mission and the actual event itself to be sustainable, IMO.
Considering how Astrobotic looks right now, IM is considerably better off. At least IM's lander actually made it.
Doesn't matter. The general public will likely not return to watch follow up coverage after the really mediocre landing attempt coverage.
The general public isn't as relevant to IM's future as NASA and IM's shareholders / partners are. Even then, a fair chunk of people will always be interested in a lunar landing until (as with reusable boosters) it becomes a novelty. Granted that's a rather small percentage of the population, but the interest will still be there for IM-2 and beyond.
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Crain: "It sounds easy in retrospect." Two navigation pods on vehicle had optimal angles. NDL angle optimized to test sensor. Quickly implemented attitude/location transformations. "This is the kind of thing that would have taken a month" in normal sw development. Basically did it in an hour and a half.
Some Apollo 13-ish jujitsu there that’s worth applauding.
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For the record, they said that they announced that they were upright because they had received telemetry that they were upright; they then received more overnight and found that the previous telemetry was stale.
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Certainly sounds like a lot of inferences being made in this forum about the reason for the lander to be horizontal at this point.
- Did one leg land on a rock?
- Did it come in with motion horizontally but not level?
- Was it on a slope already and touched down going upslope?
- Any of 100 other possibilities?
I do not pretend to know answers to those questions and lacking access to the telemetry at ground zero, and hopefully pictures of the landing area (which I might add at best will be from one side only), it may be difficult to ascertain.
They are asking the right questions - and seeking answers which they can learn from.
I applaud them for landing at all in a configuration that communicates to earth it is still alive. At least for 9-10 days before the lights go out. None of us is as smart as ALL of us.
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Why so much snark about the landing? - they are absolutely in their right to call it succesful in so far as the lander is operational right now. This was not a crash, it wasn't blown to smithereens. It is up there communicating and at full power.
They told us 24 hours ago that the lander was "upright". It isn't. Creates doubt.
Good for them to get this lander to and on the Moon. Much to applaud. But lander tipped over is not a "success". No matter how many times they say the word.
- Ed Kyle
Completely disagree, Ed. If you have defined mission parameters, and can complete them regardless of the lander's orientation, then it's a success.
And, they kind of get to set those. So they get to make that call.
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As far as I am concerned. This is mostly a failed first Lunar landing attempt by Intuitive Machines. Will not matter in the long run, if their next (and fiscally doable final) attempt is more successful.
Unlike some posters here. Think the lack of photos and videos during the landing attempt is really bad PR. The days of media people reading out a press release about what happen is long gone. General public interest in a mission requires high quality video presentations of the phases of the mission and the actual event itself to be sustainable, IMO.
Considering how Astrobotic looks right now, IM is considerably better off. At least IM's lander actually made it.
Doesn't matter. The general public will likely not return to watch follow up coverage after the really mediocre landing attempt coverage.
The general public isn't as relevant to IM's future as NASA and IM's shareholders / partners are. <snip>
Lack of interest by the general public is relevant. As that make raising capital in the future for Intuitive Machines harder. Which will likely be done a few more times, as NASA isn't fully funding the development of the Nova-C lander. NASA is just paying a fixed price service contract as bidded by Intuitive Machines.
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Granted, one can attribute EagleCam's "telemetry" tweet to be semantically correct, while people were jumping to conclusions about what it meant (namely, that it'd worked and was sending landing pictures). Also granted, they appear to be attributing to "stale telemetry", whatever that might mean, the fact that they couldn't verify the lander's position and mistakenly stated it was upright when it was, in fact, laying on its side - apparently only noticeable because of the propellant tank's residuals readings, which seems hard to believe when there must be IMUs and other sensors available to at least get an approximation as to whether it's at 90º or not, especially when they were able to detect an 8º roll upon landing.
But there's no way around the fact that they REPEATEDLY tweeted that the lander "remained in excellent health", when that's patently untrue:
- Laser landing system was NOT working, impeded by a hardware safety switch.
- Comms were acting up and led to a major issue with the orbit, plus several hasty replanning steps on the fly.
- Something must have worked so-so to have caused the 8º roll, and the condition that led to the lander falling sideways.
- The lander has a broken leg (!)
- A faceplanted lander on the regolith with antennas pointing down, which hasn't been able to transmit pictures yet because of the difficult comms, and with some solar panels covered is not "in excellent health".
Personally, I saw the treatment of SLIM's bouncy landing as being too harsh, bureaucratically looking at success criteria and not at the exciting happenings on the Moon's surface. It's a great undertaking to achieve a lunar landing in a single piece, no doubt about it. But just as being all sad faces when you just landed somewhat safely is IMO too gloomy, the bombastic treatment of the unconfirmed successes of IM-1 has been quite disappointing in the opposite sense - both from IM and NASA alike. Why is there this allergy towards dispassionately announcing the successes AND failures to the public, matter-of-factly and like the adults they should be? I get it that they're after an ever-fiercer competitive funding landscape (which is perhaps the problem rather than the cure, but that's another matter), but as the $LUNR stock shows, truth can leak out faster than they might manage to conceal it. We'll see about what can be done about the payloads, but as a safe "commercial lunar payload" delivery service, IM-1 is just skirting the line between sporty success and definite failure.
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Certainly sounds like a lot of inferences being made in this forum about the reason for the lander to be horizontal at this point.
To be fair, if it had landed in a perfectly vertical vector (as was the design purpose), it wouldn't have tipped over. And the laser system which failed was (presumably) supposed to manage that.
Unless it landed on a large rock and then fell off (which is possible, of course), it is far more likely there was a horizontal vector at the point of touchdown, one or more of the feet snagged (yes, possibly on a rock), and the centre of gravity wasn't low enough to stop it tipping over at whatever velocity the horizontal vector had at that point in time.
Mind you, the moon's surface does seem to be a lot less rocky than people always suggest it is whenever we see surface images from landing sites. It's usually just regolith.
As I commented earlier, IM-1 did seem to be a strange design by being taller than its leg span. Something with such an unusual aspect ratio just had to land perfectly vertically.
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I must admit that when I saw the lander for the first time, I though 'wow, that's tall'. It's over 4m high, with a leg span maybe two thirds of that. Any sideways movement vector upon landing would always be risky.
All the previous successful landers always looked... well, squat. Keeping a low centre of gravity and all. With very wide legs. That seemed to make sense. The Apollo landers were about 7m high with a leg span of 9.5m.
Sualdam, welcome to the forum. Enjoy your stay here.
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I wanted to transcribe Tim Crain's answer about the navigation switchout:
Tim Crain: It sounds easy in retrospect. We had the Navigation Doppler Lidar (NDL) already plumbed in to the navigation system. So, the three beams on the NDL produce a velocity measurement, as Prasun had talked about. They also produce a range measurement. And we were not using the range measurement, we had just the range rate as a backup to our optical systems. But because it was already plumbed in there, we had to rewrite those, rewrite time tags, into our measurement loader.
But the challenge was, the lasers, we have these two navigation pods on the vehicle, if you can zoom in there. [...] There are these two navigation pods on either side of the vehicle that have cameras. And the laser rangefinders point in the same direction as the cameras. Those angles were optimized for our flight trajectories to give us the best measurements to land softly.
The NDL was under one of these, and its angles were optimized to test the extent of its performance, not necessarily to feed our navigation system, but to test the sensor, because it was a technology development.
So after we figured out we could write the measurements into the laser rangefinder, we had to quickly tell the computer that the laser beams were pointed in different directions. And so there were a number of attitude transformations where it's not in the same location, it's not in the same orientation. And if you've ever seen engineers doing right hand rule transformations, there were a lot of broken wrists, as people were trying to figure out which way is it pointing.
And I will tell you that in normal software development for a spacecraft, this is the kind of thing that would have taken a month. Writing down the math. Cross-checking it with your colleagues. Doing some simple calculations to prove that you think you're right. Putting it into a simulation. Running that simulation 10,000 times. Evaluating the performance. Usually you find an error because you did something in that rotation wrong. And you roll it back and go again.
Our team basically did that in an hour and a half. And it worked.
It was one of the finest pieces of engineering I've ever had a chance to be affiliated with.
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An important physics observation from Dr. Phil Metzger:
https://twitter.comm/DrPhiltill/status/1761171833489969523
A bit of physics to help understand why this happens. When a lander is tipping, inertial forces push it over, while gravity pulls its feet back down flat. On the Moon, gravity is reduced by a factor of 6, but inertial forces are not. *Everything is 6 times tippier on the Moon.*
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Landed on it's side
https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx4_PsEleQQGUhA6Tn-95jSdGeRty3J4lk?si=tj_ZNBv7hRV9XB4B
SpaceX will now fund IM-2 just to get the knowledge of how to land sideways without breaking.
For um....reasons. ;D
Joke aside. I call this a success. They got there in enough of a piece to transmit data back to earth. All while learning a bunch of useful, new things while doing it....on a TINY budget. Anyone trying to put a negative on this landing is wrong IMO.
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An important physics observation from Dr. Phil Metzger:
https://twitter.comm/DrPhiltill/status/1761171833489969523
A bit of physics to help understand why this happens. When a lander is tipping, inertial forces push it over, while gravity pulls its feet back down flat. On the Moon, gravity is reduced by a factor of 6, but inertial forces are not. *Everything is 6 times tippier on the Moon.*
Yep.
Which is one of the things that makes me nervous about Lunar Starship
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During this thread, several took shots at IM for their updates prior to landing. Honestly this was the most detailed, frank, and honest presser I've seen to any NASA related mission in years. They admitted they forgot to remove the laser safing hardware. They admitted the elliptic orbit was serendipitous. The addition of the simple models greatly enhanced and clarified their answers. NASA and it's idiots, yes I said it, in PA could, no NEED, to learn a ton from this press conference.
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Anyone trying to put a negative on this landing is wrong IMO.
I agree.
It was a first try, and it cost around $250 million.
Apollo 11 cost around $350 million - equivalent to $3.5 billion today. The entire Apollo programme came to just under $300 billion in today's money.
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Anyone trying to put a negative on this landing is wrong IMO.
I agree.
It was a first try, and it cost around $250 million.
Apollo 11 cost around $350 million - equivalent to $3.5 billion today. The entire Apollo programme came to just under $300 billion in today's money.
IM-1 cost NASA $118M.
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IM-1 cost NASA $118M.
Yes, but Intuitive put $130 million in.
Total $248 million.
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Anyone trying to put a negative on this landing is wrong IMO.
I agree.
It was a first try, and it cost around $250 million.
Apollo 11 cost around $350 million - equivalent to $3.5 billion today. The entire Apollo programme came to just under $300 billion in today's money.
It's not a first try - it's building upon loads of (public-sector) accumulated US spaceflight experience flowing into this company, both at the design and ground-testing stage, as well as the more obvious case of the LIDAR usage.
It's also completely inappropriate to compare it with Apollo, which was an infinitely more complex *crewed* mission. Surveyor would be a fairer comparison, although that really was a first, with the first artificial satellite having been launched barely a decade prior, and being the one of the first extraterrestrial landings ever by a slim margin. That program cost $469M for 7 probes, or $67M a pop, which is around 2.5x the cost you mention for IM-1 when applying your inflation correction - without accounting for the payloads, ground support through DSN, and 60-year accumulated available expertise, getting a significantly worse result at landing.
Again, it's quite a feat to soft-land on the Moon, no matter how messily. But trying to shield away from "any negative" is not making anybody a favor.
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(snip)but as the $LUNR stock shows, truth can leak out faster than they might manage to conceal it. (snip)
The rocket launched on Feb. 15, sending Intuitive shares up about 35%. Then the stock gained more than 50% on Tuesday as the spacecraft headed to the moon. Shares closed down 11.2% on Thursday. All the moves, including trading Friday, have left Intuitive stock up about 160% for the month.
“Somebody call the WHAMbulance!”
The “truth” got out and they’re “down” to +160%
Please calm down people
All in all, the fight went pretty well
Lots of elements brought to TRL-9
Closest landing to the lunar south pole to date
Let’s see what IM can do in their remaining week.
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The twitter post has a link to the article mention, I have also provided that direct link to that article below.
Good writeup by @jeff_foust on the status of IM-1
https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1761196769193443346
Article Link (https://spacenews.com/im-1-lunar-lander-tipped-over-on-its-side/) <<<<<<<<
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IM-1 cost NASA $118M.
Yes, but Intuitive put $130 million in.
Total $248 million.
There is also non-NASA payloads and we don't know how much that Intuitive Machines received for those.
Where did you get the 130M? Is that for the development of the Nova-C lander?
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It's not a first try
So you're saying Intuitive has done this before? :o
A lot of people/countries have tried to land on the moon (and other things). All of them have used previous knowledge to develop their own attempts. Many have failed.
The fact that there was previous knowledge does not mean previous experience has been carried over. This was Intuitive's first experience of trying to land on the moon, having had no previous experience.
And the cost comparison with Apollo is highly appropriate when the relative figures involved are orders of magnitude different. The real error is in somehow assuming that the comparison means the two programmes had the same aims.
If you wish to be pedantic, Ranger 4 - an unmanned and unsuccessful US mission - in 1962 cost $170 million. That is equivalent to $1.7 billion today. And you can be sure the payload on Ranger 4 would have had a tiny fraction of the power of that on IM-1.
Intuitive has done this partially successful first attempt of theirs for under $250 million.
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Where did you get the 130M?
I looked it up.
$118 million is the NASA contract part.
Intuitive spent 'around $100 million' (Reuters, 2 hours ago) developing the lander. I read an article earlier today (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/15/private-moon-lander-lifts-off-aiming-for-first-us-lunar-touchdown-in-52-years) which said Intuitive spent $130 million on it.
$100 million, $130 million? It's a lot less than $1.7 billion for Ranger 4 in '62, or multiple billions for any of the Apollos.
Edit: And it is worth considering that NASA's Artemis 1 - which just flew round the moon a couple of years ago - costed out at around $4 billion.
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Article Link (https://spacenews.com/im-1-lunar-lander-tipped-over-on-its-side/) <<<<<<<<
From the article:
He suggested that [the tip over] was caused by the lander coming down faster than expected. The lander’s final descent was supposed to be straight down at about one meter per second, but was instead descending at about three times that velocity with about one meter per second of lateral motion.
I was hoping that a reporter would ask this question during the press conference but why was the lander coming in this fast and why was there such a large lateral motion?
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https://twitter.com/DJSnM/status/1761204988825764297
‘We all learned about Spaceflight from Kerbal space program’
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IM-1 cost NASA $118M.
Yes, but Intuitive put $130 million in.
Total $248 million.
I would expect that most of NASA's money (whatever part of the $118M was paid in installments during the development process) was included in IM's $130M. I don't think you can just add those two numbers.
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I believe both JAXA and Intuitive Machines used bad engineering judgement. Tipping over is a well-known risk, and at the very least seriously compromises the mission. I'm sure they said "Well, we are coming straight down, so it's not a problem." But this ignores the fact that not everything goes according to plan.
I strongly believe they should have build more margin into the landing legs, with a wider stance. Yes, it might take a little more mass, and require an unfolding step, but for a first mission it should have been used. Then if the first mission works, and the data shows it would not have toppled, the next mission could try a more aggressive stance.
Landing legs are one of the few areas on a spacecraft where a factor of 2-3 more margin is not completely prohibitive. They should have taken advantage of this. Compare to the surveyor spacecraft below, where the designers were much more conservative. In this report (https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19670010580/downloads/19670010580.pdf), they tested at 11 ft/sec (3.35 m/s) in one axis and 17 ft/sec (5.18 m/s) in another simultaneously. Compared to the vertical restoring force of 1.62 m/s/s, these are quite serious horizontal velocities, and I suspect these would not have been handled by SLIM or IM-1. Surveyor handled them well.
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Anyone trying to put a negative on this landing is wrong IMO.
I agree.
It was a first try, and it cost around $250 million.
Apollo 11 cost around $350 million - equivalent to $3.5 billion today. The entire Apollo programme came to just under $300 billion in today's money.
The more relevant comp, I think, was the Surveyor program, which put the U.S. on the lunar surface for the first time. The Surveyor program cost, in 2024 dollars...$4.5 billion. 2 of its 7 landers crashed.
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Anyone trying to put a negative on this landing is wrong IMO.
I agree.
It was a first try, and it cost around $250 million.
Apollo 11 cost around $350 million - equivalent to $3.5 billion today. The entire Apollo programme came to just under $300 billion in today's money.
The more relevant comp, I think, was the Surveyor program, which put the U.S. on the lunar surface for the first time. The Surveyor program cost, in 2024 dollars...$4.5 billion. 2 of its 7 landers crashed.
They were also able to pull from Ranger 3, 4, & 5, each of which had solid fuelled landing pods designed to land at up to 160 km/h (100 mph). Surveyor used a solid motor to remove ~ 96% of it's velocity. It took 4 attempts to get the US it's first soft landing.
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This is probably written somewhere on this forum but I was wondering how this lander is keeping the propellant cold? Or is it not that cold and at super high pressure? Is there some information on how they're managing prop temp and pressure?
Presume they're tolerating boil-off having loaded excess LCH4 for the purpose.
So this was wrong.
Tim Crain pretty clearly said Nova-C landers tolerate high pressures in the propellant tanks.
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The more relevant comp, I think, was the Surveyor program, which put the U.S. on the lunar surface for the first time. The Surveyor program cost, in 2024 dollars...$4.5 billion. 2 of its 7 landers crashed.
They were also able to pull from Ranger 3, 4, & 5, each of which had solid fuelled landing pods designed to land at up to 160 km/h (100 mph). Surveyor used a solid motor to remove ~ 96% of it's velocity. It took 4 attempts to get the US it's first soft landing.
And, going by this thread, chunks of this forum would have probably been calling for the overthrow of the government during the Ranger program. I guess nobody is as willing to hate a thing as its loudest fans.
They landed off-nominal, but things appear to be at least somewhat salvageable. Mistakes were made, learning has occurred, they'll have identified ways to tweak the design if needed and they've retired a lot of risks for their tech. Note that the engine and tanks performed well the whole way through, this is more than JAXA and Astrobiotic can respectively say. Now they just need to find a way to lower that CG and remember to take the safeties off the lasers before launch.
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Really silly question because of course they would have done it if it was possible… just thinking back to those early F9 landing attempts, and considering the low lunar gravity—no chance of using RCS to try righting the lander? Hey just askin!
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I believe both JAXA and Intuitive Machines used bad engineering judgement. Tipping over is a well-known risk, and at the very least seriously compromises the mission. I'm sure they said "Well, we are coming straight down, so it's not a problem." But this ignores the fact that not everything goes according to plan.
I strongly believe they should have build more margin into the landing legs, with a wider stance. Yes, it might take a little more mass, and require an unfolding step, but for a first mission it should have been used. Then if the first mission works, and the data shows it would not have toppled, the next mission could try a more aggressive stance.
Monday morning quarterbacking
Likely no room for a wider fixed legs and couldn't afford the added complexity and mass of deployable legs.
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This is probably written somewhere on this forum but I was wondering how this lander is keeping the propellant cold? Or is it not that cold and at super high pressure? Is there some information on how they're managing prop temp and pressure?
Presume they're tolerating boil-off having loaded excess LCH4 for the purpose.
So this was wrong.
Tim Crain pretty clearly said Nova-C landers tolerate high pressures in the propellant tanks.
Thanks! I haven't listened to the presser but reading the updates here I saw that mentioned as well. It makes sense on a smaller vehicle like this where you can afford to make the tank walls extra thick I guess. It's a pressure fed engine after all, right? It's cool that they were able to handle the pressure without boiloff issues at any rate. (Plus venting gas in space would lead to deviations from the planned trajectory and would have to be corrected for)
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The comparison with Surveyor is interesting. They had no hazard avoidance capability and landed essentially blind. Surveyors 3 and 5 both landed in very precarious positions which would have destroyed any of our current crop of landers. Surveyor 3 landed OK but its thrusters didn't cut off, so it lurched up and came down on the sloping wall of a crater, bounced up again and only on its third landing did it stay put, as the thrusters were commanded off from the ground. Surveyor 5 was even more of a problem. It landed with 2 feet in a crater and one outside, tilted quite steeply, and skidded downslope about 1 m before stopping. Both were saved by their widely splayed legs and low center of mass.
SLIM was specifically designed to cope with a slope and was jeopardized by its sideways motion at the end, caused by asymmetric thrust from the loss of a nozzle. It's something of a miracle that as it tumbled it ended up the way it did - it was supposed to land nearly upright and fire small thrusters to fall onto its side. Instead it rolled into a upright but upside down configuration which luckily left the solar panels still useful late in the day and the IR camera facing horizontally but in (as it were) portrait rather than landscape orientation. If it had toppled onto its solar panels there would have been no waking up later in the day.
I would call SLIM about 80 or 90 percent successful, and they seem to have a better than expected science dataset. It's too early to rate Odysseus because we don't know what will be possible from the instruments. But I would urge people not to consider 100% success or 0% failure the only options. Landings can be non-binary (to coin a phrase).
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It depends on the context and the question.
If you are managing a program of lunar missions, a percentage of predefined mission objectives that were or were not achieved is of more interest than 'did it land or not?'. But for those of us who are called on to say 'how many lunar landings have there been, and how many lunar impacts?', a binary value has its uses.
In the spirit of the old aviation dictum that any landing you can walk away from is a good one, I count this as a landing
and not an impact, so it gets a status = "L" (for landing) in the General Catalog of Space Objects.
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Do they know why it landed with horizontal velocity? Lower CG and wider landing legs are great, but it should have been moving straight down, not? Just curious what would cause the lander to descend a bit sideways if it nulled out its horizontal velocity before terminal descent.
With SLIM the problem was obvious - the engine bell literally came off and started moving sideways due to asymmetrical thrust, but that doesn't seem to be the case here unless there was some sort of TVC issue or RCS problem.
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[...] any landing you can walk away from is a good one [...]
The ILO-X telescope (a commercial payload) may have some trouble "walking away" if it is on a panel that mostly provides a view of the lunar surface.
Do they know why it landed with horizontal velocity?
Altemus floated his theory that one leg tripped on something. Perhaps this was specifically because the lander attitude was non-vertical in an attempt to null horizontal speed?
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I didn't listen to the presser. Will they be convening an Anomaly Review Board?
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I don't understand the tortured rationalizing about the failed landing. It wasn't supposed to topple over 90 degrees. I'm not a fanboi for Intuitive Machines or have a vested interest and putting on the best face for it. They're in the "recovery" or "salvage" phase post failed landing, trying to make the best of a near disaster (which would be the total breakup of the lander on landing).
There are plenty of good things on this mission: methalox engine, recovering from showstoppers like the GNC laser f'up, etc.
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For the record, they said that they announced that they were upright because they had received telemetry that they were upright; they then received more overnight and found that the previous telemetry was stale.
no they, received a telemetry, they misinterpreted it, hence deciding that lander was upright, then they received another telemetry (or reprocessed same one? didn't get it) and said "oh..., no, worry, we are qctually on one side".
Another thing I didn't ger clearly: why the unexpected roll? and did it affect wrong horizontal speed?
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As I commented earlier, IM-1 did seem to be a strange design by being taller than its leg span. Something with such an unusual aspect ratio just had to land perfectly vertically.
A commercial mission; a lander taller than large, quite like a rocket, despite wide space available in launcher for wider legs;a flying camera designed to take pictures of landing for first time; an advertisement-pressconference; "rocket scientists" totally unable to interpret telemetries, and forgetting to remove safety devices before launch; people. lying about mission status like in ancient Russian missions.
I really think the lander was designed "tall as a rocket" to show to the public an amazing HD video of an amazing private mission performing an amazing lunar landing like an amazing scifi-looking rocket resembling a spacex rocket landing.
"Fly with us, we'lll bring you to the moon!!"
(Nope)
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Time to pop the champagne!
Bill Nelson celebrating too early methinks. If they haven't established a data link, then the mission isn't a success even if there's some signs of life from down there.
Per the 16 predefined mission success criteria, this is a success!
...
15. Terminal descent
16. Landed
Anything beyond landing is icing on the cake. Maybe not fully functional, like the JAXA SLIM, but I think, certainly a great step forward.
Were those the only criteria defined?
If so, I guess it did make sense to announce success as soon as they knew it had survived landing.
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For the record, they said that they announced that they were upright because they had received telemetry that they were upright; they then received more overnight and found that the previous telemetry was stale.
no they, received a telemetry, they misinterpreted it, hence deciding that lander was upright, then they received another telemetry (or reprocessed same one? didn't get it) and said "oh..., no, worry, we are qctually on one side".
The actual quote:
Steve Altemus: Just to clear up some confusion, yesterday, we thought we were upright. And the reason was that the tanks were reading, this [points upward] is the x direction and the tanks were reading gravity on the moon, that the fill levels, there were still residuals in the tank, and we saw those measurements in the x direction. But that was stale telemetry. We worked through the night to get other telemetry down, and we noticed that in the z direction, is where we're seeing the residual tank quantities.
Another thing I didn't ger clearly: why the unexpected roll? and did it affect wrong horizontal speed?
That a roll would occur was expected, in order to point the fixed antennae towards Earth. This was discussed in the press conference. The extent of the roll, perhaps, was not. It's unclear.
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A summary of highlights from today's presser.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFtGnI2y2JY
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Having watched the presser, I wondered whether the safe switch might have vibrated to the safe position in flight? It seems so odd that the check was overlooked on the pre-launch, but, by being the most obvious reason for it being in that position, maybe another reason might be overlooked.
John
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"We chose to land on the Moon... we chose to land on the Moon and do the other things; not because they are easy; but because they are hard."
Ok... so far: the japanese have landed upside down. The americans have landed on the flank. Hopefully, the next lander will land in the right orientation. ;D
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"We chose to land on the Moon... we chose to land on the Moon and do the other things; not because they are easy; but because they are hard."
Ok... so far: the japanese have landed upside down. The americans have landed on the flank. Hopefully, the next lander will land in the right orientation. ;D
India nailed it.
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There was an interesting comment in the press conference that they didn't have to worry about boil-off because their tanks could handle the pressure. That started me wondering if they were using supercritical methane and oxygen.
When you increase the pressure of a gas-liquid mixture then at high pressures the separate gas and liquid phases disappear and you get a supercritical fluid. For oxygen that transition occurs at 50.4 bar, and for methane it happens at 46 bar.
I never thought about that as a possibility because I always assumed that the tanks would be far too heavy for space use. Some googling revealed that Intuitive bought a Class V composite tank. This is an all composite design and is suitable for low temperature and high pressure use.
https://www.compositesworld.com/articles/type-v-pressure-vessel-enables-lunar-lander
So it looks like they are using a combination of high pressure and low temperature for long term storage of methane and oxygen in space. Obviously, this would work well with a pressure fed engine design. Methalox tends to have better specific impulse than either hypergolics or solid fuels, so that opens up some interesting new possibilities.
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Do they know why it landed with horizontal velocity? Lower CG and wider landing legs are great, but it should have been moving straight down, not?
We don't know yet, but the main reason would be that optical instruments are susceptible to the lunar dust that is raised by plume impingement as the lander gets close to the ground. For this reason, the navigation reverts to dead reckoning (IMU-only) navigation in the last few tens of metres. Depending on the navigation itself as well as IMU accuracy, velocity estimates can become quite uncertain - perhaps as much as 1-2m/s. It is an art in itself to design the terminal descent and tune the navigation for this portion of the flight specifically.
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Do they know why it landed with horizontal velocity? Lower CG and wider landing legs are great, but it should have been moving straight down, not? Just curious what would cause the lander to descend a bit sideways if it nulled out its horizontal velocity before terminal descent.
There is no definite answer at the moment but it is more than likely due to the lander's primary rangefinder failure requiring them to educate the navigation system on how to use the ranging lasers from the Nasa NDL payload and compensate for the different source location on the landers body all within the 2 hour orbit before landing. Somewhere in the calculations there may have been a few decimals of inacuracy due to the rush to get the package uploaded before the landing burn.
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The absolute state of robotic lunar landers in 2024, summarized in an easily digestable form so that everyone doesn't get so worked out, with the notable exception of the multitude of Chinese Chang'e's and their rabbits doing just fine on the far side.
https://twitter.com/bobatesomemayo/status/1761196539748171864
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(snip)but as the $LUNR stock shows, truth can leak out faster than they might manage to conceal it. (snip)
The rocket launched on Feb. 15, sending Intuitive shares up about 35%. Then the stock gained more than 50% on Tuesday as the spacecraft headed to the moon. Shares closed down 11.2% on Thursday. All the moves, including trading Friday, have left Intuitive stock up about 160% for the month.
“Somebody call the WHAMbulance!”
The “truth” got out and they’re “down” to +160%
Please calm down people
All in all, the fight went pretty well
Lots of elements brought to TRL-9
Closest landing to the lunar south pole to date
Let’s see what IM can do in their remaining week.
See the recent evolution over events (not the integrated change over an arbitrary amount of time that includes as a starting point the historical low of the company's stock price of 1/5th its starting price of $10, or -80%).
It's striking investors would sell when the S/C just announced LOI and had "excellent health", isn't it? It's also very striking a lander that "remains in excellent health" and just quite successfully touched down thanks to some of the "brightest feats of engineering" (sic) causes the stock to tumble -40% upon a press conference announcing its triumphs. Coincidentally that's also -40% compared to the initial valuation of 3 years ago.
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a lander taller than large, quite like a rocket,
This is why I don't like the idea of landing something the height of an external tank with a relativly small width of landing gear on the lunar surface.
I really think the lander was designed "tall as a rocket" to show to the public an amazing HD video of an amazing private mission performing an amazing lunar landing like an amazing scifi-looking rocket resembling a spacex rocket landing.
I hardly think a photo op is going to determine the design of a spacecraft.
In the spirit of the old aviation dictum that any landing you can walk away from is a good one, I count this as a landing
But if there had been anyone there to walk away from the landing - they wouldn't have!
Keith
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[...] any landing you can walk away from is a good one [...]
The ILO-X telescope (a commercial payload) may have some trouble "walking away" if it is on a panel that mostly provides a view of the lunar surface.
Do they know why it landed with horizontal velocity?
Altemus floated his theory that one leg tripped on something. Perhaps this was specifically because the lander attitude was non-vertical in an attempt to null horizontal speed?
I'm thinking about a situation where they didn't discern a boulder, and one leg touched it first, tilting the vehicle.
Recovery from such a tilt involves thrusting sideways with full gimbal to straighten up - at the expense of gaining horizontal velocity, with the intent of stopping this velocity if there's enough time and fuel.
But that maneuver may not have succeeded. It's pretty extreme - ideally you can just avoid getting into this situation.
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IMHO the overall result is good, both for NASA (who got a working CLPS lander on the surface of the Moon with the 2nd try, the 1st being Astrobotic's Peregrine) and for IM (who got a working lander on the surface of the Moon on their first try and with lots of engineering data to pore over). Mistakes were undoubtably made, but my impression so far is that these folks (IM) are the sort who learn quickly. I look forward to seeing what they can do, both on this mission and in future ones.
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...
In the spirit of the old aviation dictum that any landing you can walk away from is a good one, I count this as a landing
But if there had been anyone there to walk away from the landing - they wouldn't have!
Keith
And even if they had, they wouldn't be coming back on that lander.
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Do they know why it landed with horizontal velocity? Lower CG and wider landing legs are great, but it should have been moving straight down, not?
We don't know yet, but the main reason would be that optical instruments are susceptible to the lunar dust that is raised by plume impingement as the lander gets close to the ground. For this reason, the navigation reverts to dead reckoning (IMU-only) navigation in the last few tens of metres. Depending on the navigation itself as well as IMU accuracy, velocity estimates can become quite uncertain - perhaps as much as 1-2m/s. It is an art in itself to design the terminal descent and tune the navigation for this portion of the flight specifically.
That's why God gave us radar.
And why the Apollo LM engineers gave us wide beefy landing legs. Apollo 11 landed with sideways velocity because Armstrong didn't believe the functioning velocity indicators. Apollo 12 & 14 slid after they landed. Apollo 15 landed with one foot in a crater leaving the opposite one off the ground entirely. Yet none fell over and all completed their missions.
The lunar space race of the 60's either identified or solved all the problems involved with landing on the Moon. It was hard then; today it's only hard because of of hubris and ignoring the lessons of the past.
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And why the Apollo LM engineers gave us wide beefy landing legs.
With crushable aluminum honeycomb shock absorbers built into the struts to absorb mistakes.
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Do they know why it landed with horizontal velocity? Lower CG and wider landing legs are great, but it should have been moving straight down, not?
We don't know yet, but the main reason would be that optical instruments are susceptible to the lunar dust that is raised by plume impingement as the lander gets close to the ground. For this reason, the navigation reverts to dead reckoning (IMU-only) navigation in the last few tens of metres. Depending on the navigation itself as well as IMU accuracy, velocity estimates can become quite uncertain - perhaps as much as 1-2m/s. It is an art in itself to design the terminal descent and tune the navigation for this portion of the flight specifically.
That's why God gave us radar.
The British gave you radar.
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One more perfect reason to have a crew member in the loop. Eagle was being targeted into a boulder filled patch
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Do they know why it landed with horizontal velocity? Lower CG and wider landing legs are great, but it should have been moving straight down, not?
We don't know yet, but the main reason would be that optical instruments are susceptible to the lunar dust that is raised by plume impingement as the lander gets close to the ground. For this reason, the navigation reverts to dead reckoning (IMU-only) navigation in the last few tens of metres. Depending on the navigation itself as well as IMU accuracy, velocity estimates can become quite uncertain - perhaps as much as 1-2m/s. It is an art in itself to design the terminal descent and tune the navigation for this portion of the flight specifically.
Makes sense. With the kicking up of lunar regolith I wonder how many metres above the surface this starts to become an issue. Odysseus seemed to have quite a slow descent so it makes sense that a fair bit of regolith would have been kicked up.
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Do they know why it landed with horizontal velocity? Lower CG and wider landing legs are great, but it should have been moving straight down, not?
We don't know yet, but the main reason would be that optical instruments are susceptible to the lunar dust that is raised by plume impingement as the lander gets close to the ground. (snip)
There is an awful lot of arrogance on display with posters from noobs to professionals thinking they know oh so much better.
Have you ever engineered a lidar for space applications?
Probably not
I have
Dust flying sideways, like we saw in the Apollo videos, wouldn’t generate a return like the surface.
Do I know how their thresholds adapt to the radical rise in signal level as it goes from “more than 5 km” to meters? No. I know how my system did it but they have other unknown solutions, probably more sophisticated.
Even video can see through “Kicking up a little dust out there.” if it is set up appropriately.
A tall lander to look like a rocket?
Poppycock
Minimizing the hardware with two disparate tanks and one engine has only one symmetrical solution: inline stacking. Result? A tall lander. System engineering, not PR
Keep it squat like Surveyor?
They shed most of their velocity with solid rockets, which are out of scope for commercial entities. (When comparing costs don’t forget the certification of the rocket and the facilities for launching solid rockets. I used to walk by a memorial plaque for guys who died working around one of those.)
Extending legs?
We had a saying “A space mechanism costs a million dollars.” but that was in the 20th century and why I engineered the mechanism out of my lidar.
On the other hand, a system I built for a different NASA mission could have used an additional mechanism I had sketched out but the program couldn’t afford it and they got all the data they wanted even if it was a bit unsightly. These trades get made.
Or NASA could try it the JPL or MSFC way. Bludgeon the risks with billion dollar sledge hammers (plural).
Or you can include the ultimate adaptable control system, a human. How’s that working, Artemis? ($10B*n and it still will be preceded by an autonomous landing.)
It was cool the way SLIM stopped and hovered while doing hazard avoidance but it appears they exceeded the limit of their landing engine.
Why IM-1’s autonomous guidance brought it down at 3X the design velocity, and failed to null out the lateral velocity while pirouetting to the preferred orientation would be an interesting thing to learn. I look forward to that.
This stuff is HARD.
Enough with the kvetching
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https://x.com/spacetechlab/status/1761450649001119952?s=61
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Time to pop the champagne!
Bill Nelson celebrating too early methinks. If they haven't established a data link, then the mission isn't a success even if there's some signs of life from down there.
Per the 16 predefined mission success criteria, this is a success!
...
15. Terminal descent
16. Landed
Anything beyond landing is icing on the cake. Maybe not fully functional, like the JAXA SLIM, but I think, certainly a great step forward.
Were those the only criteria defined?
If so, I guess it did make sense to announce success as soon as they knew it had survived landing.
Yes, per the IM-1 press kit:
https://www.intuitivemachines.com/_files/ugd/7c27f7_51f84ee63ea744a9b7312d17fefa9606.pdf (https://www.intuitivemachines.com/_files/ugd/7c27f7_51f84ee63ea744a9b7312d17fefa9606.pdf)
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"We chose to land on the Moon... we chose to land on the Moon and do the other things; not because they are easy; but because they are hard."
Ok... so far: the japanese have landed upside down. The americans have landed on the flank. Hopefully, the next lander will land in the right orientation. ;D
India nailed it.
Yes! As to "... do other things", we can chalk up the rolling over for the US IM-1 and a head stand for the Japanese SLIM, although both unintentional. Maybe "... we chose to do the other things first ..."
The Indian Chandrayaan-3 on the other hand, achieved all its goals and added an intentional hop to boot.
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From pg 25 of the IM Press kit:
"Nova-C uses two types of radios. Vehicle
health and spacecraft status operate at
a speed comparable to a 1976 modem.
Meanwhile, the science data radios go
16,000 times faster."
Based on the information that has been presented so far,
what are the probabilities of the following suppositions
being valid:
1. All post landing 2 way communication has been done with
the health and spacecraft status radio.
2. Is 300 baud a reasonable data rate based on the comparision
to a 1976 modem?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Doubt that there is any information available to us, but the question
can still be asked:
If the lander is on its side, presumably the communications are utilizing
sidelobe(s) on the lander antennas. How many db loss can be expected?
Is 4M bits (not bytes) per second is a "reasonable" guess as to the download
speed for science data if and when that link becomes operational?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Separately, someone else (I think) mentioned the horizontal velocity
near the lunar surface. It may be quite interesting to learn what all is
involved in that and what was learned. Did switching laser range finders
play a role -- purely speculative question on my part -- did note during the
press conference that the change was implemented in about 1 1/2 hours to
perform a task that would normally take 1 month.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Interesting that the press kit contained nothing for success criteria beyond landing.
Looks like the project has gone "above(? - depends on your reference system) and beyond"
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[snip]
Ok... so far: the japanese have landed upside down. The americans have landed on the flank. Hopefully, the next lander will land in the right orientation. ;D
India nailed it.
[snip]
The Indian Chandrayaan-3 on the other hand, achieved all its goals and added an intentional hop to boot.
To be fair, India nailed it the second time, after gaining the experience and knowledge needed from a failed first attempt.
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Yes, you are correct. One should also not forget the Chinese rabbits hopping around both on the near and far sides - not a single failure (to my knowledge).
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https://x.com/spacetechlab/status/1761450649001119952?s=61
Just to quote the tweet thread so it's preserved here:
@SpaceTechLab - EagleCam Update: https://news.erau.edu/headlines/eaglecam-updates-embry-riddle-device-lands-on-moon
The EagleCam team has discussed the importance of agility and adaptability since the beginning of this project. As a result, it has been able to quickly pivot over the past 36 hours.
Following news from Intuitive Machines (IM) that the Nova-C class Lunar Lander may currently be on its side, the EagleCam team is now working closely with IM to deploy EagleCam as soon as possible. The goal is that the resulting images will provide critical insight into the lander's orientation, health and additional mission support.
More information will be released as soon as it becomes available."
@therobdale - Thanks for sharing! I'm curious - how would have deploying it before landing have impacted the landing itself?
@SpaceTechLab - EagleCam’s deployment flag was based off Odysseus’ navigation altitude data. With the software patch into the nav data during the last orbit, there wasn’t time to make sure the new data could be fed to EagleCam. So we decided to power down and help ensure a safe landing.
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Any updates on the communication problems?
Been a fair number of hours since the landing.
What is the consensus ... will the communication improve to provide limited data (engineering telemetry, limited scientific data from priority payloads and a handful of photos) or are the issues (weak signal, autonomous ping pong between radio switch resets) too impactful to resolve prior to IM-1 going dark in about 8 days?
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There is an awful lot of arrogance on display with posters from noobs to professionals thinking they know oh so much better...
Keep it squat like Surveyor?
What I actually said was that I was surprised when I saw how tall it was compared to its width, and that I have become accustomed all these years to seeing landers which have wider leg reach than their height. I believe I am allowed to have that opinion based on past experience.
Now, I may not be a super-duper experienced engineer who has built Lidar systems for space missions or anything, but we are all agreed that it did tip over, right? And that the Surveyors and Lunar Landers (and the Vikings, come to that) didn't? And I hope we'd all agree which basic Laws of Physics were in action for those respective outcomes?
Thus, in hindsight, I am not that surprised that IM-1 tipped over given that parts of the systems built by super-duper engineers failed, it thus had an unintended sideways velocity component upon touch down, and that that was enough to tip its balance due to its different design compared with the landers of yore.
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According to the comms docs (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=52116.msg2247996#msg2247996), if I'm reading them correctly, they'll be stuck with an effective bitrate of 1.25 kbps downlink if the high gain antenna is not accessible.
If that were to run 24 hours a day for the 9 days of expected life, that's a maximum of ~118 MB of data received.
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Time to pop the champagne!
Bill Nelson celebrating too early methinks. If they haven't established a data link, then the mission isn't a success even if there's some signs of life from down there.
Per the 16 predefined mission success criteria, this is a success!
...
15. Terminal descent
16. Landed
Anything beyond landing is icing on the cake. Maybe not fully functional, like the JAXA SLIM, but I think, certainly a great step forward.
Were those the only criteria defined?
If so, I guess it did make sense to announce success as soon as they knew it had survived landing.
Yes, per the IM-1 press kit:
https://www.intuitivemachines.com/_files/ugd/7c27f7_51f84ee63ea744a9b7312d17fefa9606.pdf (https://www.intuitivemachines.com/_files/ugd/7c27f7_51f84ee63ea744a9b7312d17fefa9606.pdf)
Then I think it was appropriate to announce success.
(Though maybe they should have added some success criteria related to the actual payloads ... but given the criteria that were defined...)
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That's why God gave us radar.
The British gave you radar.
But God gave us the British, therefore through the transitive property of giving...
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The British also gave us Beagle 2.
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The British also gave us Beagle 2.
Yeah, we re-did the Mars A to Z with that one.
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There is an awful lot of arrogance on display with posters from noobs to professionals thinking they know oh so much better.
When people propose novel solutions I agree. When people ask why solutions from the past (by equally intelligent engineers looking at the same problems), were not used, then to some extent the arrogance belongs to current engineers who thought they knew better.
Minimizing the hardware with two disparate tanks and one engine has only one symmetrical solution: inline stacking. Result? A tall lander. System engineering, not PR
Why symmetrical? The LEM wasn't. They put two (or was it four?) tanks down low. The distance from the center was the inverse of the mass flow rate, so the system remains balanced as fuel is used.
Keep it squat like Surveyor? [...] which shed it's volocity with solid rockets.
Agree solids not practical here. But Apollo was a lot squatter than IM-1, and it was fully liquid. And it would have been squatter yet if it didn't need the ascent stage, which forced stacking. Putting the tanks down low, between the legs, helps enormously. Viking was also squat, with a tank on each end, down low.
Extending legs? We had a saying “A space mechanism costs a million dollars.” but that was in the 20th century and why I engineered the mechanism out of my lidar. These trades get made.
Entirely true that mechanisms are expensive. But what's the cost of not including them? If they could have prevented turnover, it would have avoided a (I'm guessing at least) 30% data loss of a $300M mission. It also resulted in 30% decrease in IM's stock price and market cap, also about $100M. It was indeed a trade, and not a good one.
Or NASA could try it the JPL or MSFC way. Bludgeon the risks with billion dollar sledge hammers (plural).
This cuts both ways. It certainly seems you could do the job for less than billions, and accept a little more risk. On the other hand, noting that three teams of smart folks (Surveyor, LEM, Viking) with almost unlimited money (in comparison to IM) all decided on squat landers, perhaps should give you pause.
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An important physics observation from Dr. Phil Metzger:
https://twitter.comm/DrPhiltill/status/1761171833489969523
A bit of physics to help understand why this happens. When a lander is tipping, inertial forces push it over, while gravity pulls its feet back down flat. On the Moon, gravity is reduced by a factor of 6, but inertial forces are not. *Everything is 6 times tippier on the Moon.*
Along these lines, if IM-1 lander was landing on Earth, and had the same resistance to tipping due to an unintended sideways velocity, it would look like this. I think most folks would agree that a design like this puts a high premium on coming straight down, with very little margin for error for any sideways drift.
Note this scaling does not apply to landing on a slope, where both the tipping and restoring forces are proportional to gravity.
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In the spirit of the old aviation dictum that any landing you can walk away from is a good one, I count this as a landing
and not an impact, so it gets a status = "L" (for landing) in the General Catalog of Space Objects.
But a Great landing is when you can use the vehicle afterward.
I read that Jeff Koons's piece of fartwork is hidden on the underside of the lander and can't be imaged, so there is something positive to the tipover.
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The lunar space race of the 60's either identified or solved all the problems involved with landing on the Moon.
This might be overstating things. NASA and the Soviets identified and solves a good many problems of landing on the Moon, but not all of them. There was relatively little awareness of regolith plume issues, for example, which is something we're working right now to clarify.
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Along these lines, if IM-1 lander was landing on Earth, and had the same resistance to tipping due to an unintended sideways velocity, it would look like this. I think most folks would agree that a design like this puts a high premium on coming straight down, with very little margin for error for any sideways drift.
Note this scaling does not apply to landing on a slope, where both the tipping and restoring forces are proportional to gravity.
This invites a comparison to Falcon 9, so I am rather curious on the height of the CM position on a mostly-empty F9 booster relative to the one on IM-1, given that IM-1 doesn't have 9 heavy rocket engines at the bottom.
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Honestly this was the most detailed, frank, and honest presser I've seen to any NASA related mission in years.
It's a whole day later and I just wanted to second this and reiterate that everyone here should actually watch that press conference (https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZWEwR8fscFY). All the way through, including all of the Q+A. It is stunning, both in the details that they candidly provided, and in the stories of how they overcame those challenges. Only a fraction of those details were documented in this thread, and only a (smaller) fraction made it into subsequent press reports. Watch the presser, and that goes especially for anyone here bold enough to be posting their opinions. I just finished watching it for the second time. Truly stunning.
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Time to pop the champagne!
Bill Nelson celebrating too early methinks. If they haven't established a data link, then the mission isn't a success even if there's some signs of life from down there.
Per the 16 predefined mission success criteria, this is a success!
...
15. Terminal descent
16. Landed
Anything beyond landing is icing on the cake. Maybe not fully functional, like the JAXA SLIM, but I think, certainly a great step forward.
it did not land, it fell but survived,. just by chance.
The basic requirement of landing is touch down upright and remain upright and stable.
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Honestly this was the most detailed, frank, and honest presser I've seen to any NASA related mission in years.
It's a whole day later and I just wanted to second this and reiterate that everyone here should actually watch that press conference (https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZWEwR8fscFY). All the way through, including all of the Q+A. It is stunning, both in the details that they candidly provided, and in the stories of how they overcame those challenges. Only a fraction of those details were documented in this thread, and only a (smaller) fraction made it into subsequent press reports. Watch the presser, and that goes especially for anyone here bold enough to be posting their opinions. I just finished watching it for the second time. Truly stunning.
Kudos to the media who called in, again in large numbers for a recent NASA presser, and asked intelligent and relevant questions. There was one, obligatory, "what was the worst moment" question. But only one.
This, sadly but unsurprisingly, did not change and isn't likely to. "Only a fraction of those details ... made it into subsequent press reports. "
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The British gave you radar.
In fact, one of our very own, Arthur C. Clarke helped to develop it!
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The British gave you radar.
In fact, one of our very own, Arthur C. Clarke helped to develop it!
I thought he did GCA (Ground Controlled Approach), the system used to talk pilots down through poor visibility, rather than radar itself. Either way, I'm grateful and acknowledge the contribution and thoroughly enjoyed his book Glide Path which was a semi-autobiographical book about that work.
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Honestly this was the most detailed, frank, and honest presser I've seen to any NASA related mission in years.
It's a whole day later and I just wanted to second this and reiterate that everyone here should actually watch that press conference (https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZWEwR8fscFY). All the way through, including all of the Q+A. It is stunning, both in the details that they candidly provided, and in the stories of how they overcame those challenges. Only a fraction of those details were documented in this thread, and only a (smaller) fraction made it into subsequent press reports. Watch the presser, and that goes especially for anyone here bold enough to be posting their opinions. I just finished watching it for the second time. Truly stunning.
I agree! I was amazed at the level of detail and and honest feedback provided during the press conference, especially in the Q&A. In the end, given all the out of sequence steps taken and the turn of events to get down on the Lunar surface (even tipped over) - IM-1 was very fortunate - almost a mini Apollo 13 event (with out humans of course). Lots of respect for the Intuitive Machines team. Expecting bigger things from them down the road! Hope they can figure out the comms issues soon!
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Honestly this was the most detailed, frank, and honest presser I've seen to any NASA related mission in years.
It's a whole day later and I just wanted to second this and reiterate that everyone here should actually watch that press conference (https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZWEwR8fscFY). All the way through, including all of the Q+A. [...] I just finished watching it for the second time. Truly stunning.
What came across so clearly is that Altemus and Crain have deep enthusiasm for — and knowledge of — the vehicle design and operation, and an eagerness to share their enthusiasm. They provided detailed and non-evasive answers to tough questions. They were neither overly self-congratulatory nor glum.
I do wish someone had asked about center-of-gravity. More directly, was the design constrained by payload fairing diameter?
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According to the comms docs (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=52116.msg2247996#msg2247996), if I'm reading them correctly, they'll be stuck with an effective bitrate of 1.25 kbps downlink if the high gain antenna is not accessible.
If that were to run 24 hours a day for the 9 days of expected life, that's a maximum of ~118 MB of data received.
Hoping the IM-1 team can figure out the coms issues quickly (given only 8 days left of sun). The maximum of 118 MB of data assumes a fairly constant coms link which I am not certain they have (given what I heard during the news conference about radios rebooting every 15 minutes...).
Even 100 MB of data should cover critical engineering data, priority scientific data and a few photos.
One way or the other... we should know by the end of next week....
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I do wish someone had asked about center-of-gravity. More directly, was the design constrained by payload fairing diameter?
That would have been a great question to ask. I suspect your idea about the design being constrained by the airing diameter is correct. Common sense would tell you that lower and wider makes sense when you don't know how flat of a surface you are landing on.
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I do wish someone had asked about center-of-gravity. More directly, was the design constrained by payload fairing diameter?
That would have been a great question to ask. I suspect your idea about the design being constrained by the airing diameter is correct. Common sense would tell you that lower and wider makes sense when you don't know how flat of a surface you are landing on.
Sounds like NSF Live needs to invite them for an interview ... they'd be stellar for this community.
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Comms traffic between DSN Madrid and CAPSTONE. Could be unrelated to IM-1, but the timing is interesting.
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MODERATORS: Would it be possible to split this topic into an Updates topic and a Discussion topic?
Personally, I only want to read actual Updates.
I have no interest in reading even meaningful discussion about the mission, much less a debate about whether it is a success, a failure, a partial success, or a partial failure.
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https://twitter.com/InfographicTony/status/1761441166384648232
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MODERATORS: Would it be possible to split this topic into an Updates topic and a Discussion topic?
The updates topic would be quite short.
Right now, it would consist of:
1. It landed
2. It's on its side.
Maybe the updates topic should also be locked - so no one could comment based on smaller details. Because if it wasn't locked, people would comment (it's how forums work). Possibly only those who think they know more than anyone else should be allowed to, though.
Both of the current updates have initiated a multitude of opinions - as any further updates would undoubtedly do.
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Flexibility is the key to... space science? :)
https://twitter.com/SpaceTechLab/status/1761477687971831833
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https://twitter.com/InfographicTony/status/1761441166384648232
Tim Crain has reached out to the infographic maker, saying he's willing to share attitude data to help create an accurate graphic of the tip-over event.
https://twitter.com/CrainTim/status/1761527017562865988
@InfographicTony - IM-1 Work-in-progress of my (unofficial) infographic with the updated post-landing. This is only a "possible" scenario and is my interpretation of how Odysseus may have landed based on yesterday's news conference. The steps will be added to my main infographic and are subject to change as more details emerge.
@CrainTim - Would it help if I gave you an attitude profile?
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If the art cube is facing down, my impression is that the side-mounted solar panel visible in this render should be pointing up.
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I do wish someone had asked about center-of-gravity. More directly, was the design constrained by payload fairing diameter?
That would have been a great question to ask. I suspect your idea about the design being constrained by the airing diameter is correct. Common sense would tell you that lower and wider makes sense when you don't know how flat of a surface you are landing on.
Don't think the design was constrained by payload fairing diameter. Rather it is money or the lack of it. They use a landing gear with fixed legs instead of a wide stance landing gear with folding legs that could easily fit in the payload fairing.
Also the Falcon payload fairing have the same interior diameter of about 180 inches as everyone1 else in accordance with EELV specifications. Don't think there is any other available payload fairing that is wider.
footnote 1 - Everyone includes ULA, Arianeaspace & JAXA.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wynBeg7BYr0
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[...] was the design constrained by payload fairing diameter?
[...] lower and wider makes sense when you don't know how flat of a surface you are landing on.
Don't think the design was constrained by payload fairing diameter. Rather it is money or the lack of it. They use a landing gear with fixed legs instead of a wide stance landing gear with folding legs that could easily fit in the payload fairing. [...]
There are a number of constraints. Cost was likely one; reliability likely another; mass likely a third. Given the decision to use pre-deployed legs, what limited the width of the stance? More simply, did the deployed legs utilize all the available payload width?
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[...] was the design constrained by payload fairing diameter?
[...] lower and wider makes sense when you don't know how flat of a surface you are landing on.
Don't think the design was constrained by payload fairing diameter. Rather it is money or the lack of it. They use a landing gear with fixed legs instead of a wide stance landing gear with folding legs that could easily fit in the payload fairing. [...]
There are a number of constraints. Cost was likely one; reliability likely another; mass likely a third. Given the decision to use pre-deployed legs, what limited the width of the stance? More simply, did the deployed legs utilize all the available payload width?
The two large fuel tanks are the main factor for the tallness or squatness of the vehicle. The rest is just a box built around it. So it's either one on top of another (making the ship slender and tall with a higher center of gravity), or side by side (with a squat fat looking with a lower center of gravity), like the test vehicle that NASA Morpheus used in it landing trials a few years ago.
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Don't think the design was constrained by payload fairing diameter. Rather it is money or the lack of it. They use a landing gear with fixed legs instead of a wide stance landing gear with folding legs that could easily fit in the payload fairing.
Also the Falcon payload fairing have the same interior diameter of about 180 inches as everyone1 else in accordance with EELV specifications. Don't think there is any other available payload fairing that is wider.
footnote 1 - Everyone includes ULA, Arianeaspace & JAXA.
I'm pretty sure they did not use all available space. Here's a picture of the lander in the spacecraft adapter. Assuming it's a standard spacecraft adapter (1.575m) (330 pixels), then the landing gear spans 903 pixels, or about 4.3 meters. I get similar results measuring other pictures. So they could have widened the stance at least some.
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I'm pretty sure they did not use all available space. Here's a picture of the lander in the spacecraft adapter. Assuming it's a standard spacecraft adapter (1.575m) (330 pixels), then the landing gear spans 903 pixels, or about 4.3 meters. I get similar results measuring other pictures. So they could have widened the stance at least some.
Possible error in your calculus: You are measuring the length of a side of the square, not the diagonal across the square, which is actually the controlling dimension. From what I can find, the payload envelope size in the largest Falcon 9 fairing allows for a maximum diameter of 4.572m (180"). Intuitive Machines describe their lander as having legs that are 4.6m wide. I think it's safe to say that they used up all available space for a fixed leg design.
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I'm pretty sure they did not use all available space. Here's a picture of the lander in the spacecraft adapter. Assuming it's a standard spacecraft adapter (1.575m) (330 pixels), then the landing gear spans 903 pixels, or about 4.3 meters. I get similar results measuring other pictures. So they could have widened the stance at least some.
Possible error in your calculus: You are measuring the length of a side of the square, not the diagonal across the square, which is actually the controlling dimension. From what I can find, the payload envelope size in the largest Falcon 9 fairing allows for a maximum diameter of 4.572m (180"). Intuitive Machines describe their lander as having legs that are 4.6m wide. I think it's safe to say that they used up all available space for a fixed leg design.
You are correct. IM says 4.6 meters in many places. And the inside of the fairing (as shown in diagrams above) allows 4.604 meters. So they did use the available room.
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I replied on the (new) CLPS Mission Design Trade-Offs thread, and suggest any follow-ups would be most appropriate there.
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=60434
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Dr. Phil Metzger wrote a good bit on how you can end up tipping over on low gravity bodies. (He uses the attached pictures to illustrate as he goes).
https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1761531341978427402
About how the lunar environment makes everything tippier…
1) I’m sure the CLPS contractors know this and designed for it. My point is that the Moon does this to your hardware, so when things go wrong (as they do) then tipping happens more often than on Earth.
2) There are different ways you can tip. For static stability, gravity makes no difference. You fall when you are so tilted that the center of gravity (cg) is outside of your footpad. I don’t know where the Nova-C has its cg, but crudely it could handle ~54 degrees tilt.
3) But for dynamic stability, gravity does make a difference. Imagine your vehicle is accidentally moving sideways at touchdown with velocity v. The energy of that motion is (1/2)m v^2 where m is the vehicle’s mass. The vehicle will fall over if that energy exceeds the potential energy needed to lift the cg over its highest point as the vehicle rotates up and over the outboard footpad. So in this rough picture, if the cg is a 1 unit of height, it will be lifted to 1.268 units of height as the vehicle rotates up & over the footpad.
So the change in height of the cg is deltaH = (1.268 - 1) = 0.268 units. The potential energy is (m g DeltaH). Tipping over occurs if this potential energy is less than the sideways kinetic energy. Solving for v, the tipping limit is v>Sqrt(2 g DeltaH)
So now let’s reduce g.
Actually, let’s look at it this way:
Say it gets exposed to a sideways velocity v on the Moon that puts it barely at the edge of tipping. How wide would the footpads need to be on Earth (with 6x larger g) so that the same sideways [velocity] would be at the edge of tipping?
The DeltaH would be 1/6 as high for the same limit, so the factor of 6 and 1/6 cancel out. Solving the trigonometry, the footpads would have 0.3 units of width. Basically, straight down. If you built it with straight down legs, it would be pretty easy to tip, right?
That’s how tippy it is on the Moon even with the wider legs. So on the Moon you have to design to keep the sideways velocities very low at touchdown, much lower than you would if landing the vehicle in Earth’s gravity.
That doesn’t mean all kinds of tipping are the same as if the legs were straight down. If you land on a slope, the static stability doesn’t care about gravity so the wide legs make you stable on a slope the same as on Earth. This is only for the dynamic forces from unplanned motions at touchdown.
You can get unplanned motions several ways. (1) Navigation error. (2) Control failure. (3) Unlevel terrain causing the footpads to hit at different times, putting a torque on the vehicle.
IM was speculating that #3 happened. If you hit a rock and it causes the vehicle to begin rotating slightly in the tilt direction, you rely on the width of the footpads to stop that rotation, but on the Moon it is like having footpads that are straight down, not spread out. So you have to keep the maximum possible rotation very low.
You keep the rotation that would result from hitting a rock very low by having a descent rate at touchdown that is very low.
The whole mission is a tradeoff between risks though, and failures are usually from a combination of things happening together.
You might have a small navigation error that gives you a residual sideways velocity at touchdown, which by itself is in limits, but made worse because blowing dust makes the navigation lasers less accurate at touchdown, which we can’t predict yet since we haven’t solved the physics of blowing dust — so some guesswork went into designing the nav lasers and this is why we are doing the missions, to take the risks and solve the physics — and this may be combined with landing on a slight slope that is amplified in a really unlucky way because a big rock ends up right under a footpad on the uphill side. So that footpad hits much sooner causing a torque that rotates the vehicle. The descent rate was designed to be low enough to handle that slope & rock by themselves but combined with the other errors you end up with more rotational/translational kinetic energy than the legs’ width was designed to handle in lunar gravity. You can be super conservative and design with even wider legs but it is a tradeoff of vehicle & mission requirements.
I am sure the CLPS contractors know all this. My point is just that in lower gravity you will see some types of failures more often than you’ll see them on Earth, and tipping over is one of those things. This is why, IMO, two lunar landings in a row tipped over.
And in response to "So is there a reason we aren't designing things to not tip?"
Yeah, it’s a tradeoff. Landing legs are mass. And you need your vehicle to fit the diameter of the rocket’s payload faring and so you can’t make it wider, only taller to fit enough fuel tanks to land as much mass as you wanted to land on the Moon. So you design for that aspect ratio lander, not as wide as you’d like, which imposes dynamical limits which imposes nav limits, but you can’t invest infinite resources to make the nav system platinum-plated. It is all a tradeoff of requirements and risks.
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So the change in height of the cg is deltaH = (1.268 - 1) = 0.268 units. The potential energy is (m g DeltaH). Tipping over occurs if this potential energy is less than the sideways kinetic energy. Solving for v, the tipping limit is v>Sqrt(2 g DeltaH)
For g = 9.807 m/s² on Earth and 1.625 m/s² on the Moon, this gives tipping speeds of only 2.3 m/s on Earth and 0.9 m/s on the Moon for the IM-1 lander!
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A method for landing totally disregarding final attitude has been invented 27 years ago, and is even more feasible on the Moon, thanks to low gravity.
The final resting attitude is always vertical, if surrounding rocks allow it, but anyway stable, because petals engines are strong enough to make the whole probe tip as needed upon opening, and the final configuration has a very very large base.
It worked for small Pahfinder, but also for bigger Spirit and Oppy.
IM-1 mass: 675 kg (112 kg on moon)
Spirit Rover+Lander mass: 533 kg (87 kg on moon, 202 kg on mars)
This also means that an airbag-equipped lander for Moon could have a 1200 kg mass (=200 kg on moon)
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A method for landing totally disregarding final attitude has been invented 27 years ago, and is even more feasible on the Moon, thanks to low gravity.
The final resting attitude is always vertical, if surrounding rocks allow it, but anyway stable, because petals engines are strong enough to make the whole probe tip as needed upon opening, and the final configuration has a very very large base.
It worked for small Pahfinder, but also for bigger Spirit and Oppy.
IM-1 mass: 675 kg (112 kg on moon)
Spirit Rover+Lander mass: 533 kg (87 kg on moon, 202 kg on mars)
This also means that an airbag-equipped lander for Moon could have a 1200 kg mass (=200 kg on moon)
The first lunar lander 60 years ago used the petal method - Luna 9
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A method for landing totally disregarding final attitude has been invented 27 years ago, and is even more feasible on the Moon, thanks to low gravity.
The final resting attitude is always vertical, if surrounding rocks allow it, but anyway stable, because petals engines are strong enough to make the whole probe tip as needed upon opening, and the final configuration has a very very large base.
It worked for small Pahfinder, but also for bigger Spirit and Oppy.
IM-1 mass: 675 kg (112 kg on moon)
Spirit Rover+Lander mass: 533 kg (87 kg on moon, 202 kg on mars)
This also means that an airbag-equipped lander for Moon could have a 1200 kg mass (=200 kg on moon)
The first lunar lander 60 years ago used the petal method - Luna 9
And the first to use petals on Mars was Mars 3.
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https://iloa.org/ilo-x-instruments-are-on-the-moon-surface-teams-hope-for-milky-way-galaxy-and-lunar-images/ (https://iloa.org/ilo-x-instruments-are-on-the-moon-surface-teams-hope-for-milky-way-galaxy-and-lunar-images/)
The ILO-X instrument has some news and a thumbnail image from cruise. Hoping for more, as we all are.
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Odysseus to Earth: "I've fallen down and can't get up"
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Crazy idea - any possibility of utilizing the reaction control system to try and "lift/rotate" the spacecraft 90 degrees?
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I'm pretty sure they did not use all available space. Here's a picture of the lander in the spacecraft adapter. Assuming it's a standard spacecraft adapter (1.575m) (330 pixels), then the landing gear spans 903 pixels, or about 4.3 meters. I get similar results measuring other pictures. So they could have widened the stance at least some.
It is in the fairing half in the photo you attached. No room to make legs wider.
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A method for landing totally disregarding final attitude has been invented 27 years ago, and is even more feasible on the Moon, thanks to low gravity.
Doesn't work on the moon; needs an aeroshell and parachute to reduce most of the velocity.
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A method for landing totally disregarding final attitude has been invented 27 years ago, and is even more feasible on the Moon, thanks to low gravity.
Doesn't work on the moon; needs an aeroshell and parachute to reduce most of the velocity.
Luna 9 etc, Jim! You need a braking engine, just like Surveyor. Or the Ranger hard lander...
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If we're not going to split this into updates and discussion threads, can readers at least read the last couple pages before posting the same discussion as already hashed out? We should be seeing some actual updates in the next couple days so a lot of people are watching this thread.
EDIT: I'll copy out the "two more tips" from my profile that some of you might find useful:
In addition to the two 'PSA' tips in my forum signature:
3. You can suppress the forum's auto-embed of Youtube videos by deleting the leading 'www.' (four characters) in the URL. This can be useful when linking text to a particular video, or you don't want your post bloated by an embed.
4. Particularly annoying users can be suppressed in forum view via Modify Profile -> Buddies / Ignore List.
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So the change in height of the cg is deltaH = (1.268 - 1) = 0.268 units. The potential energy is (m g DeltaH). Tipping over occurs if this potential energy is less than the sideways kinetic energy. Solving for v, the tipping limit is v>Sqrt(2 g DeltaH)
For g = 9.807 m/s² on Earth and 1.625 m/s² on the Moon, this gives tipping speeds of only 2.3 m/s on Earth and 0.9 m/s on the Moon for the IM-1 lander!
In hindsight (always 20/20 ;) ) it now seems a shame that IM didn’t choose an option that had already been demonstrated: the squat four tank configuration of Morpheus which is pictured a few posts back. But it takes more mass, more plumbing, probably more structure…
Hindsight also makes it obvious that all of the animations show IM-1 descending perfectly vertically. Perhaps IM had too much confidence in their terminal control. Really looking forward to a full reconstruction on the last moments of the landing.
However, the tipping calculation assumed that the footpad digs into immovable regolith or hits an immovable rock and the force is unopposed. While a rock is possible, the latter depends on the strength and quickness of the ACS. Particularly if the obstruction is not “rock solid” a countering control force from near the top could reduce, or even eliminate the tipping torque.
That this wasn’t mentioned in the press conference suggests, but does not state conclusively, that any such anti-tipping force was not significant or present.
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A method for landing totally disregarding final attitude has been invented 27 years ago, and is even more feasible on the Moon, thanks to low gravity.
Doesn't work on the moon; needs an aeroshell and parachute to reduce most of the velocity.
Luna 9 etc, Jim! You need a braking engine, just like Surveyor. Or the Ranger hard lander...
Surveyor and Ranger were not inclosed in air bags.
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A method for landing totally disregarding final attitude has been invented 27 years ago, and is even more feasible on the Moon, thanks to low gravity.
Doesn't work on the moon; needs an aeroshell and parachute to reduce most of the velocity.
Luna 9 etc, Jim! You need a braking engine, just like Surveyor. Or the Ranger hard lander...
Surveyor and Ranger were not inclosed in air bags.
Luna 9 & 13 was enclosed in an airbag. Surveyor and Ranger Blk 2 didn't use airbags, but they all used separating braking engines to cut out nearly all velocity, which is what he's referring too
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Well, since this thread has not yet (to my knowledge) been ruled off limits for discussion, I will toss out a few thoughts
and refrain to claiming that I am sharing anything, since it is not shared if no one accepts it (or at least looks at it).
A current theme in this thread reminds me of when SpaceX was first trying to land booster on barges. It seems that
members of this community made significant contributions in performing error recovery on video returned from the
booster during the early recovery attempts.
Anyways, not being familiar with tracking networks that are available for IM, (DSN and the other one), can signals being
downlinked be visible to more than one dish at the same time. Are these signals being recorded in a form equivalent
to the live signal at the antenna in such a way that essentially no (yeah zero is impossible but hopefully the idea is clear)
signal degradation occurs. Weeks from now, post processing can be done. Superficiallly, combining two such signals
from similarily sized dishes could provide 3db of increased signal and significantly improve S/N ratio. Also super sampling or oversampling each bit time might enable additional process somewhat analogous to Viterbi's soft-error decoding algorithm. In addition, correlation patterns could be developed to provide more likelihood of extracting data
since (at least in many space systems) a repetitive format pattern is used including sync bits, and in many cases, expected bits or expected ranges of bits can be expected. Also for bit patterns that do not change or change within
a very narrow range such as a power supply voltage or a temperature, overlaying and syncing multiple patterns spread
over time (minutes, hours, days) should enable improving signal to noise ratio. Each doubling of the number of frames
of data could provide (in oversimplified theory) a 3db gain in S/N ratio. FWIW, it is my understanding that GPS signals
are actually buried in the noise but are successfully dug out, in some cases to do life dependent operations such as
landing aircraft in low visibility conditions
Finally, Artificial Intelligence has already extracted unexpected patterns from data. To AI, apparently data is data and
it does not care where it came from and what it represents. Depending on how much data is actually extracted in real
time this might or might not be worth a look at post-mission to see if anything useful can be found.
Despite how unlikely it would be, and how it has not yet apparently been activated, is there only one data rate for
the science radio? The thought is that if the science radio is ever successfully activated and without knowledge of what
actual radiation pattern is from whatever antenna is to be used, will a lower bit rate allow a better signal to noise
ratio? On the the other hand, the "better and/or correct" decision probably would have been to have only the one
data rate since adding multiple data rates adds complications with additional failure modes, more complex operational
failure modes, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc ---- maybe you get the idea.
(edit/gongora: removed mangled quote)
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Luna 9 & 13 was enclosed in an airbag.
They had crasher stages I believe.
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Does it seem strange to anyone but me that the "foot pads" on the landing legs are essentially flat as opposed to having rounded edges like the LMs did?
I mention this because without the rounded edges it would be much easier for the feet to "bite" into the lunar surface and catch on it.
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Scott did a summary "short" YouTube video (from his full run video) related to the most common question has a high center of mass and narrow base.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/EFUKODHm1xE
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Scott did a summary "short" YouTube video...
I watched that.
The thing that still screams out is: it fell over because it had a high centre of mass and a fairly narrow leg span.
I understand that they designed it that way for the reasons/space constraints they mentioned, but... it still fell over and compromised the mission somewhat.
It reminds me of how my own students will often put a lot of effort into explaining to me why they did something wrong.
I explain to them that trying to justify an error is a way of at least partially giving it validation - trying to excuse it. And that the real way forward is to accept it as a mistake and find an alternative.
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Has there been any “official” update given since Friday’s press conference? The last daily update on the IM web page was Friday, and I don’t find anything on the NASA pages either.
I’m particularly curious about LRO flyovers. Weren’t those supposed to happen yesterday?
I know, private company; not entitled to answers; etc., etc. But NASA missions were on there, and NASA assets are being used to communicate with it, and a NASA spacecraft should have done multiple flyovers of the landing site by now. I would think that a NASA update is more than appropriate.
Apologies if an update was given in another thread (either public or L2) and I missed it. If so, a pointer to it would be greatly appreciated.
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Anyways, not being familiar with tracking networks that are available for IM, (DSN and the other one), can signals being downlinked be visible to more than one dish at the same time. Are these signals being recorded in a form equivalent to the live signal at the antenna in such a way that essentially no (yeah zero is impossible but hopefully the idea is clear) signal degradation occurs. Weeks from now, post processing can be done. Superficiallly, combining two such signals from similarily sized dishes could provide 3db of increased signal and significantly improve S/N ratio.
Yes, this can be done, and is done routinely in radio astronomy. Each station records on a wide band recorder, wide enough to contain all the signal modulations with all their differing doppler shifts. Once all recordings are available they are summed, with appropriate and time varying delays to account for Earth rotation. The problem is finding the right delays - the known station positions will get you close, but cannot account for random delays like the ionosphere. It's immensely helpful if there is a common known source visible to all stations to initialize the timing search. Astronomers use a nearly quasar; IM-1 could potentially use a signal bounded off the moon by an Earth station. Overall, summing is an expensive process carried out at a specialized facility and usually needs to be arranged well in advance. Each station needs a very accurate clock and suitable recorder. But the main constraint is likely arranging time on a bunch of big radio telescopes all at once.
Simpler and real-time techniques can be used when the 2 or more dishes are close together. Then various uncertainties like Earth rotation, ionospheric delays, and doppler shifts cancel, or nearly so. Then you basically delay one signal by the right amount, then add it to the other. This is what JPL does when the array two dishes at the same complex.
Also super sampling or oversampling each bit time might enable additional process somewhat analogous to Viterbi's soft-error decoding algorithm. In addition, correlation patterns could be developed to provide more likelihood of extracting data since (at least in many space systems) a repetitive format pattern is used including sync bits, and in many cases, expected bits or expected ranges of bits can be expected. Also for bit patterns that do not change or change within a very narrow range such as a power supply voltage or a temperature, overlaying and syncing multiple patterns spread over time (minutes, hours, days) should enable improving signal to noise ratio. Each doubling of the number of frames of data could provide (in oversimplified theory) a 3db gain in S/N ratio.
Almost all these tricks are already studied (and used where helpful) in the field of error-correcting codes. Many of them closely approach the theoretical performance bounds given the signal to noise available. Your best bet is to sum the various sources to get the best signal-to-noise possible, then use the known error correction methods.
FWIW, it is my understanding that GPS signals are actually buried in the noise but are successfully dug out, in some cases to do life dependent operations such as landing aircraft in low visibility conditions
Yes, but this is enabled since each receiver knows exactly what each satellite is sending (each has it's own PRN sequence). The receiver does not need to recover the message, just find the delay that causes the received signal to best match the (known) message contents. Position is computed from the delays, not the message content. (There are also much slower, higher SNR components that send unknown messages such as status and almanacs.)
Finally, Artificial Intelligence has already extracted unexpected patterns from data. To AI, apparently data is data and
it does not care where it came from and what it represents. Depending on how much data is actually extracted in real
time this might or might not be worth a look at post-mission to see if anything useful can be found.
Current techniques are quite close to the theoretical limits (which are quite solid), and AI is unlikely to help much.
Despite how unlikely it would be, and how it has not yet apparently been activated, is there only one data rate for
the science radio? The thought is that if the science radio is ever successfully activated and without knowledge of what actual radiation pattern is from whatever antenna is to be used, will a lower bit rate allow a better signal to noise ratio? On the the other hand, the "better and/or correct" decision probably would have been to have only the one data rate since adding multiple data rates adds complications with additional failure modes, more complex operational failure modes, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc ---- maybe you get the idea.
Yes, normal science radios offer a wide variety of rates for exactly the reasons you suggest, and they use them exactly as outlined - pick the highest rate that works under the circumstances. I don't know about IM-1, but the only reason I could see for them not to have multiple rates is that they are always the same distance from Earth. But I suspect (but do not know) they used some standard radio and have access to multiple rates.
These are all sensible questions, with fairly well known but quite technical solutions. I don't know your status in life, or what resources you have access to, but many technical schools offer course in "Information theory", "Error-correcting codes" and so on that will answer most of your questions. If this is the way you think, you would enjoy these courses, and they are not bad for job prospects either. Just be aware that some math is required.
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Has there been any “official” update given since Friday’s press conference? The last daily update on the IM web page was Friday, and I don’t find anything on the NASA pages either.
I’m particularly curious about LRO flyovers. Weren’t those supposed to happen yesterday?
I know, private company; not entitled to answers; etc., etc. But NASA missions were on there, and NASA assets are being used to communicate with it, and a NASA spacecraft should have done multiple flyovers of the landing site by now. I would think that a NASA update is more than appropriate.
Apologies if an update was given in another thread (either public or L2) and I missed it. If so, a pointer to it would be greatly appreciated.
You haven't missed anything because there hasn't BEEN anything. Which stinks. IM is not impressing anyone.
Sure wish there was a discussion thread for all the insufferable Monday-morning quarterbacking going on, though.
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Gentlemen, please - you can't fight in here... this is the Internet.
As for LRO images, it takes a bit of time to find a lander in those big images so you shouldn't necessarily expect a result the day after an image is taken.
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The lack of updates is worrying, unless they are holding back for another planned press conference this week. I would think that if they had managed to download photos from the moon surface they would have been released by now. Previous photos they took were only 1 or 2 days old before release.
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Gentlemen, please - you can't fight in here... this is the Internet.
<snip>
Consider this awesome updated Dr. Strangelove quote stolen! It is now mine..
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From what little has been released by the Intuitive team, it appears the Nova-C IM-1 lander’s initial lunar orbit may have had a very low perilune. There are a few pieces of data that support this. First, the comment that the orbit needed to be raised soon after LOI. Second, the DOI burn was skipped because IM-1 was already in its descent orbit with a perilune of 10 km.
The comment during the press conference that they had an unexpected opportunity to test the laser altimeter indicates that they were in a very low orbit soon after LOI. Knowing the effective range of that device would tell us more. My guess is that the perilune may have been as low as 1 or 2 km, necessitating an emergency orbit adjustment. The low perilune would explain the shorter orbital period which, in turn, would explain the earlier landing time (before the one-orbit go-around).
My speculation is that IM-1 may have come close to a mission-ending impact similar to that of Luna 25. It is unfortunate that no reporter chose to ask for exact details of the orbits. Does anyone know if the specifics of the various lunar orbits will be available eventually? At this point, almost nothing is known of the exact apolune and perilune altitudes immediately after LOI. The same holds for the orbit after it was “raised.” The fact that IM-1 was already in a Descent Orbit raises questions about the announcement that the vehicle was in a circular 92-km orbit after LOI.
To sum up, IM-1 may have come close to a mission-ending impact soon after Lunar Orbit Insertion. This is just my speculation. If another press conference is held, I hope that someone will ask questions about the scenario that I have just presented. One question should be about the apparent confusion just before LOI, when there seems to have been a problem with communicating with IM-1. Did this lead to a lack of knowledge of the exact trajectory as the craft neared the Moon? Did this lack of information lead to an initial orbit much different than the planned 100-km circular orbit? (By the way, was TCM-3 confirmed to have taken place?)
The danger of direct injection into a circular 100-km orbit may have been why the Apollo craft initially entered an elliptical orbit of about 100 x 300 km. That leaves room for error during LOI. If one is aiming at a circular initial orbit of 100-km, it doesn’t take much of an over-burn to produce a perilune altitude that is lower than the surface of the Moon.
During the next media event, it would help if details about these orbital maneuvers are requested. What was the latitude and longitude of the LOI burn? I am assuming that it was over the north pole of the Moon, but that needs to be confirmed.
What was the exact altitude of perilune on orbit 1? What was the latitude and longitude of perilune 1? How high above the mountain tops was IM-1 flying? What was the exact orbit after the orbit was raised? What was the exact inclination of IM-1’s orbit?
Just how close was IM-1 to disaster? Was it in no peril at all? We need more data to answer these questions. This is an opportunity for lessons learned for future Moon missions.
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My speculation is that IM-1 may have come close to a mission-ending impact similar to that of Luna 25.
With respect, Luna 25 failed because a manoeuvring engine couldn't be shut down, and instead of being placed in an elliptical orbit preparatory for landing, it ended up on a trajectory which took it directly into the Moon's surface at some speed.
Pretty much any moon lander mission is close to a mission-ending impact. And quite a few achieve such.
IM-1 actually made it down, but tripped over something on the surface at a lateral velocity of about 1m/s and ended up on its side in an otherwise fully functional state.
Luna 25 made a new crater. A bit like Beagle 2 on Mars.
It's also worth bearing in mind Russia initially 'blamed' the Luna 25 crash on American sabotage until a software issue was identified later.
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My guess is that the perilune may have been as low as 1 or 2 km, necessitating an emergency orbit adjustment.
That would make for some spectacular photography. Of course they did release two photos from orbit that might be geo-located for altitude estimates:
https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1760426223073734704/photo/1
https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1760452044454842575/photo/1
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Luna 25 made a new crater. A bit like Beagle 2 on Mars.
Beagle 2 appears to have landed and partly deployed. No crater. By the standards of IM-1 maybe we should call it a success?
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Beagle 2 appears to have landed and partly deployed. No crater. By the standards of IM-1 maybe we should call it a success?
Well, if we scale 'partial success' from 1-10, Beagle probably scores 1 :)
It impacted too hard and sent no data back. For all practical purposes, it crashed. And certainly at the time, they believed they had seen the impact site as a dark blur. It was only some ten years later they identified the probe in very blurry images, suggesting it might have remained almost intact.
IM-1 is around 7-8 on that same 'partial' scale IMO.
How would you rate Philae when it bounced around 67P a few years ago? Was it a success, a failure, or only partial after it fell into a hole? It was still impressive for short time.
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[...] The fact that IM-1 was already in a Descent Orbit raises questions about the announcement that the vehicle was in a circular 92-km orbit after LOI. [...]
Define 'circular.'
Notably absent from the IM announcements are details of the initial and adjusted orbits and reasons for conducting a maneuver not previously announced. The orbit adjustment was described as raising the orbit; presumably it was conducted at apolune.
Question: using 1740 km as the radius of the Moon (so 1840 km would be a circular 100 km altitude orbit), had the vehicle hypothetically been in a 1780 x 1880 km (radial) orbit would it have been accurate to characterize that as a 92 km (altitude) circular orbit? (It would be 42 x 142 km in altitude.)
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https://twitter.com/SpcPlcyOnline/status/1761890075887927602
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https://twitter.com/SpcPlcyOnline/status/1761890075887927602
Marcia also makes a point of singling out Scott Tilley's thread looking at the comms situation on Odysseus today. His conclusion: "....at this point the communications options for IM-1 seem very limited and at low data rates only."
https://twitter.com/SpcPlcyOnline/status/1761892681582530912
Tilley Thread here:
https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1761861522676928661
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A method for landing totally disregarding final attitude has been invented 27 years ago, and is even more feasible on the Moon, thanks to low gravity.
Doesn't work on the moon; needs an aeroshell and parachute to reduce most of the velocity.
no you don't, gravity is 1/6, arriving at low altitude at low speed is much easier on the moon, you can even easily hover.
The hard parth is last 10 meters, when you have to cope with boulders and dust and rocks and slopes, but airbags don't care any of them, they just bounce till stop.
These landers are unmanned.
If they were manned, landing would be much easier, being no need for automated landing without realtime feedback to ground control.
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Beagle 2 appears to have landed and partly deployed. No crater. By the standards of IM-1 maybe we should call it a success?
Well, if we scale 'partial success' from 1-10, Beagle probably scores 1 :)
It impacted too hard and sent no data back. For all practical purposes, it crashed.
I think you are confusing with another mission, beagle2 landed safely and started deployement, then a solar petal got stuck. Some genius decided that the only antenna had to be under the last petal... so Beagle 2 is still there, awaiting for instructions from ground control...(ok, it's frozen, it's just to give an idea).
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Has there been any “official” update given since Friday’s press conference? The last daily update on the IM web page was Friday, and I don’t find anything on the NASA pages either.
People tend to work less during weekends unless there's something urgent. Our curiosity may be urgent for us but it may not be urgent for IM. So try waiting for Monday.
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The British gave you radar.
In fact, one of our very own, Arthur C. Clarke helped to develop it!
I thought he did GCA (Ground Controlled Approach), the system used to talk pilots down through poor visibility, rather than radar itself. Either way, I'm grateful and acknowledge the contribution and thoroughly enjoyed his book Glide Path which was a semi-autobiographical book about that work.
Way off topic, but Heinlein, Asimov and de Camp worked at the Naval Aeronautical Research Laboratory in Philadelphia. Asimov did chemistry, de Camp did some hydraulics work and became an officer, and Heinlein was involved with among other things, pressure suit testing. Heinlein also made a big stink about there not being enough female engineers, and got in trouble for refusing to fake data for a plexiglass canopy. They also contributed some ideas on the Combat Information Centre but it was a bit of a stretch to say they worked on that (which at the time was top secret and regarded as something out of science fiction).
Which neatly brings us full circle to Intuitive Machines' neatly laid out control centre. The central circle allowed Star Trek bridge-style interaction, while it looked like each team leader could look out at the screens of their own team, who could swivel to talk to them. Most of the small satellite/launcher control rooms I've seen so far tend to look like either like a small office or a smaller version of NASA theatre-like control rooms.
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To help fill the news vacuum about IM-1 here is another screenshot of a transmission at 2024-02-25 22:58:05 UTC. IM-1 is alive and ...
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Some background info on the IM-1 antennas:
https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1757561924517020015
IM-1 has 4 hemispheric antennas and 1 high gain antenna
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https://twitter.com/TM_Eubanks/status/1761857225075609857
Why the IM-1 signal is weak - none of the antennas are pointing at the Earth (i.e., the old top).
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It's amazing that we haven't got an update for two days about an AMERICAN lunar mission (even though they said they'll provide an update at least once per day) so we have to rely on amateurs once again as we do for the Chinese missions. Seriously... if this continues to be the trend for Artemis/CLPS, I won't mind if the Chinese astronauts step on the Moon first. What would be different?
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Where are the pictures? Maybe the cameras are pointed down in the dirt??
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The only picture we've seen is this one (though not exactly a surface photo, but one at 10km height):
https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1761170012847456573
It's a photo taken through a fisheye lens. Here's an attempt to dewarp it:
https://twitter.com/LJiam2020/status/1761542404715454710
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At long last: PHOTOS!!!!
https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1762111937490378942
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LRO LROC photo:
https://www.lroc.asu.edu/posts/1360
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https://twitter.com/int_machines/status/1762111937490378942
Odysseus continues to communicate with flight controllers in Nova Control from the lunar surface. After understanding the end-to-end communication requirements, Odysseus sent images from the lunar surface of its vertical descent to its Malapert A landing site, representing the furthest south any vehicle has been able to land on the Moon and establish communication with ground controllers. 1/5 (26FEB2024 0745 CST)
Odysseus captured this image approximately 35 seconds after pitching over during its approach to the landing site. The camera is on the starboard aft-side of the lander in this phase. 2/5 (26FEB2024 0745 CST)
As part of Odysseus’ descent onto the lunar surface, Hazard Relative Navigation algorithms detected nine safe landing sites within the targeted south pole region, which is an area that contains permanently shadowed regions that may be rich in resources, including water ice that could be used for future propulsion and life support on the Moon. 3/5 (26FEB2024 0745 CST)
Images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera team confirmed Odysseus completed its landing at 80.13°S and 1.44°E at a 2579 m elevation. After traveling more than 600,000 miles, Odysseus landed within 1.5 km of its intended Malapert A landing site, using a contingent laser range-finding system patched hours before landing. Image credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University. lroc.asu.edu/posts/1360 4/5 (26FEB2024 0745 CST)
https://twitter.com/int_machines/status/1762111945291755652
Flight controllers intend to collect data until the lander’s solar panels are no longer exposed to light. Based on Earth and Moon positioning, we believe flight controllers will continue to communicate with Odysseus until Tuesday morning. Image credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University. 5/5 (26FEB2024 0745 CST)
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LRO LROC photo: https://www.lroc.asu.edu/posts/1360
Caption text from one of those images:
Odysseus came to rest at 80.13°S, 1.44°E, 2579 m elevation, within a degraded one-kilometer diameter crater where the local terrain is sloped at a sporty 12°. The same image as above without the arrow; the image width is 973 meters, and the image was acquired on 24 February 2024 at 18:57 UTC (12:57 pm CST).
IM update above:
Based on Earth and Moon positioning, we believe flight controllers will continue to communicate with Odysseus until Tuesday morning.
That is sadly much shorter timeframe than the original 7-9 days, and I think this explains the lack of updates. They are in the middle of furiously working to extract what data they can through the tiny soda straw of comm link that they do have, in the next (now) 24 hours.
As a former communications engineer (mostly satcom), and a longtime follower of comm strategies on Mars missions, I have Deep Thoughts, but I'll wait until later for that. Godspeed IM -- we're all rooting for you.
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Seriously... if this continues to be the trend for Artemis/CLPS, I won't mind if the Chinese astronauts step on the Moon first.
That might happen anyway.
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https://youtu.be/t00yk5Rg78o
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Seriously... if this continues to be the trend for Artemis/CLPS, I won't mind if the Chinese astronauts step on the Moon first.
That might happen anyway.
It will be a sad day for western democracy, so let's hope CLPS and Starship work..
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no you don't, gravity is 1/6, arriving at low altitude at low speed is much easier on the moon, you can even easily hover.
The hard parth is last 10 meters, when you have to cope with boulders and dust and rocks and slopes, but airbags don't care any of them, they just bounce till stop.
These landers are unmanned.
If they were manned, landing would be much easier, being no need for automated landing without realtime feedback to ground control.
Wrong on many items.
Landing on the moon takes more delta V than landing on mars. You can't " arriving at low altitude at low speed" without braking and for the air bags to work.
These landers are automated. There is no " realtime feedback to ground control.". It is all done onboard.
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It's amazing that we haven't got an update for two days about an AMERICAN lunar mission (even though they said they'll provide an update at least once per day) so we have to rely on amateurs once again as we do for the Chinese missions. Seriously... if this continues to be the trend for Artemis/CLPS, I won't mind if the Chinese astronauts step on the Moon first. What would be different?
Let it go. Welcome to the future. It is a commercial mission. They have no requirement for daily updates. Spaceflight is routine. IM-1 lander can't move. It only can send data and only a little at that. Nothing has changed. They are still figuring out things.
Do we get daily updates from Juno, JWST, LRO, etc?
edit.
And asking at 6:33 am? Nobody is going to do anything at that time.
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Great answer Jim!
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Let it go. Welcome to the future. It is a commercial mission. They have no requirement for daily updates. Spaceflight is routine. IM-1 lander can't move. It only can send data and only a little at that. Nothing has changed. They are still figuring out things.
Do we get daily updates from Juno, JWST, LRO, etc?
edit.
And asking at 6:33 am? Nobody is going to do anything at that time.
I'm going to quibble with all that.
First, although they have no "requirement" for daily updates, it hurts their own reputation to appear to be hiding something. They do themselves no favors. They have clearly adopted the corporate policy of keep quiet about bad news, but that rarely works in the long term. Also, that doesn't help the CLPS program either. I can easily see a member of Congress saying "The American taxpayers paid for this mission, how come we're being kept in the dark?" That could then lead to pressure on the agency.
Second, it's not a good comparison between long-duration, mature missions, and a short-term mission that was only expected to last about 10 days at the most and suffered a major problem at its start. We don't get daily updates from those other missions because everything is working well. NASA has been quick to release info when Voyager or Hubble have experienced problems, however.
We can all be sure that if they had good news to report, they would have been providing regular updates.
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Let it go. Welcome to the future. It is a commercial mission. They have no requirement for daily updates. Spaceflight is routine. IM-1 lander can't move. It only can send data and only a little at that. Nothing has changed. They are still figuring out things.
Do we get daily updates from Juno, JWST, LRO, etc?
edit.
And asking at 6:33 am? Nobody is going to do anything at that time.
I'm going to quibble with all that.
First, although they have no "requirement" for daily updates, it hurts their own reputation to appear to be hiding something. They do themselves no favors. They have clearly adopted the corporate policy of keep quiet about bad news, but that rarely works in the long term. Also, that doesn't help the CLPS program either. I can easily see a member of Congress saying "The American taxpayers paid for this mission, how come we're being kept in the dark?" That could then lead to pressure on the agency.
Second, it's not a good comparison between long-duration, mature missions, and a short-term mission that was only expected to last about 10 days at the most and suffered a major problem at its start. We don't get daily updates from those other missions because everything is working well. NASA has been quick to release info when Voyager or Hubble have experienced problems, however.
We can all be sure that if they had good news to report, they would have been providing regular updates.
I think they've been pretty good, it was a weekend, and guess what, as soon as Monday morning arrived, we got another update.
While I disagree with those who think 'it's a commercial mission and they don't owe us anything'. At the same time I think they're doing pretty good. (ok, so not great, excellent, perfect, 100%, 5 star..., but pretty darn good IMO)
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I'll add that although I agree (sorta) with the gist of Jim's post that they don't owe the public anything, I do think that's short-sighted.
At the most basic level what matters is what is in their contract with NASA. NASA has success criteria and I assume that NASA pays out part of the award based upon achieving those criteria. And I assume that those criteria include returning data from the NASA instruments. In other words, if it landed successfully but then was unable to send back the data, they might get some of the contract award, but not all of it.
But there are bigger issues than just what is in the contract. The credibility of the company is one. The credibility of the CLPS program is another. Those things can be determined by public perception, not just meeting contract stipulations, as we saw what happened with IM's stock price after they revealed that their vehicle had tipped over. They may want to consider if their public relations is helping or hurting.
(One last thing: as for it being a weekend, when you only have ten days of active life for a mission, you work through the weekends and take days off later. They were working over the weekend, they just chose not to communicate over the weekend.)
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Let it go. Welcome to the future. It is a commercial mission. They have no requirement for daily updates. Spaceflight is routine. IM-1 lander can't move. It only can send data and only a little at that. Nothing has changed. They are still figuring out things.
Do we get daily updates from Juno, JWST, LRO, etc?
edit.
And asking at 6:33 am? Nobody is going to do anything at that time.
I'm going to quibble with all that.
First, although they have no "requirement" for daily updates, it hurts their own reputation to appear to be hiding something. They do themselves no favors. They have clearly adopted the corporate policy of keep quiet about bad news, but that rarely works in the long term. Also, that doesn't help the CLPS program either. I can easily see a member of Congress saying "The American taxpayers paid for this mission, how come we're being kept in the dark?" That could then lead to pressure on the agency.
Second, it's not a good comparison between long-duration, mature missions, and a short-term mission that was only expected to last about 10 days at the most and suffered a major problem at its start. We don't get daily updates from those other missions because everything is working well. NASA has been quick to release info when Voyager or Hubble have experienced problems, however.
We can all be sure that if they had good news to report, they would have been providing regular updates.
What, specifically, were you expecting to be told by IM over the weekend — particularly after that "open the kimono" news conference on Friday?
It's on its side and transmitting data as well as it can given the orientation. They've posted this morning that they expect insolation should allow it to keep operating until tomorrow morning.
If a moonquake (or alien) results in the spacecraft becoming vertical, I imagine there will be an update…
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Let it go. Welcome to the future. It is a commercial mission. They have no requirement for daily updates. Spaceflight is routine. IM-1 lander can't move. It only can send data and only a little at that. Nothing has changed. They are still figuring out things.
Do we get daily updates from Juno, JWST, LRO, etc?
edit.
And asking at 6:33 am? Nobody is going to do anything at that time.
I'm going to quibble with all that.
First, although they have no "requirement" for daily updates, it hurts their own reputation to appear to be hiding something. They do themselves no favors. They have clearly adopted the corporate policy of keep quiet about bad news, but that rarely works in the long term. Also, that doesn't help the CLPS program either. I can easily see a member of Congress saying "The American taxpayers paid for this mission, how come we're being kept in the dark?" That could then lead to pressure on the agency.
Second, it's not a good comparison between long-duration, mature missions, and a short-term mission that was only expected to last about 10 days at the most and suffered a major problem at its start. We don't get daily updates from those other missions because everything is working well. NASA has been quick to release info when Voyager or Hubble have experienced problems, however.
We can all be sure that if they had good news to report, they would have been providing regular updates.
What, specifically, were you expecting to be told by IM over the weekend — particularly after that "open the kimono" news conference on Friday?
It's on its side and transmitting data as well as it can given the orientation. They've posted this morning that they expect insolation should allow it to keep operating until tomorrow morning.
If a moonquake (or alien) results in the spacecraft becoming vertical, I imagine there will be an update…
I would much rather hear from a real engineer when something actually happens rather than from a PR person with no new information once every 8 hours.
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https://twitter.com/int_machines/status/1762111937490378942
Odysseus continues to communicate with flight controllers in Nova Control from the lunar surface. After understanding the end-to-end communication requirements, Odysseus sent images from the lunar surface of its vertical descent to its Malapert A landing site, representing the furthest south any vehicle has been able to land on the Moon and establish communication with ground controllers. 1/5 (26FEB2024 0745 CST)
Odysseus captured this image approximately 35 seconds after pitching over during its approach to the landing site. The camera is on the starboard aft-side of the lander in this phase. 2/5 (26FEB2024 0745 CST)
As part of Odysseus’ descent onto the lunar surface, Hazard Relative Navigation algorithms detected nine safe landing sites within the targeted south pole region, which is an area that contains permanently shadowed regions that may be rich in resources, including water ice that could be used for future propulsion and life support on the Moon. 3/5 (26FEB2024 0745 CST)
Images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera team confirmed Odysseus completed its landing at 80.13°S and 1.44°E at a 2579 m elevation. After traveling more than 600,000 miles, Odysseus landed within 1.5 km of its intended Malapert A landing site, using a contingent laser range-finding system patched hours before landing. Image credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University. lroc.asu.edu/posts/1360 4/5 (26FEB2024 0745 CST)
https://twitter.com/int_machines/status/1762111945291755652
Flight controllers intend to collect data until the lander’s solar panels are no longer exposed to light. Based on Earth and Moon positioning, we believe flight controllers will continue to communicate with Odysseus until Tuesday morning. Image credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University. 5/5 (26FEB2024 0745 CST)
In the first image, I have trouble figuring out what we are seeing.
Was this image taken right before the landing?
Is the white portion of the image, the surface of the Moon?
Is the black portion of the image, the lander's shadow?
I hope that there is a way to "unfish" these fish-eye lens images.
P.S. Here is a link to the PDF of the update:
https://7c27f7d6-4a0b-4269-aee9-80e85c3db26a.usrfiles.com/ugd/7c27f7_357496b3ba404948ba24ad63081b5d23.pdf
https://www.intuitivemachines.com/im-1
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I would much rather hear from a real engineer when something actually happens rather than from a PR person with no new information once every 8 hours.
There are other options than these two.
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It's on its side and transmitting data as well as it can given the orientation. They've posted this morning that they expect insolation should allow it to keep operating until tomorrow morning.
If a moonquake (or alien) results in the spacecraft becoming vertical, I imagine there will be an update…
"Vertical" meaning either upright or like SLIM ;-)
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Interesting that they report that it landed on a 12° slope.
I wonder if it is tipped upslope or downslope?
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Interesting that they report that it landed on a 12° slope.
I wonder if it is tipped upslope or downslope?
I guess upslope would better explain the horizontal orientation relative to lunar gravity as reported in the press conference.
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If the higher resolution image in this post (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=59696.msg2571566#msg2571566) was, as said, taken about 35 seconds after pitchover, that would in the nominal planned trajectory data be at an altitude of about 430m, a vertical velocity of about 5 m/s, and a horizontal velocity of about 15 m/s.
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https://twitter.com/SpcPlcyOnline/status/1761890075887927602
I wonder if they will have time to deploy EagleCam today?
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I'm afraid that getting an EagleCam selfie must be very low on the priority list given the tiny amount of bandwidth available to them right now. I would expect them to want to capture as much telemetry data from the descent and landing as possible.
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If it's going lights out Tuesday morning, the maximum possible data budget goes from 118MB to 65MB. With only 13MB of that being left to gather.
The total so far is likely significantly less than 52MB. Scott Tilley suggests that the fight to get the comms to stop switching modes was only fixed a day or so ago.
https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1761897192921420182
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I'm afraid that getting an EagleCam selfie must be very low on the priority list given the tiny amount of bandwidth available to them right now. I would expect them to want to capture as much telemetry data from the descent and landing as possible.
I was thinking that also but I think that it would still be a good idea to see if the deployment mechanism for the Eaglecam works (even if they don't transfer the images back to Earth). Plus, they may have already downloaded a lot of the telemetry already, we don't really know. I imagine that they will have another press conference this week (after Tuesday morning) explaining all of the difficult choices that they had to make because of the shorten timeline.
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Looking again at the two pictures sent back in this thread (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=59696.msg2571566#msg2571566), I believe the ~430m descent photo was sent when they thought they had more time, and what looks like a very low quality ground photo was sent after they realized they had until Tuesday morning.
The first might have been 40KB to downlink, the second, 7KB or less. They didn't just use low resolution (400x300), but also set the jpeg compression very high.
It'd be a bit over 4 minutes to download the first pic, 45s to download the second. They have somewhere around 1440 minutes left.
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I'm going to quibble with all that.
First, although they have no "requirement" for daily updates, it hurts their own reputation to appear to be hiding something. They do themselves no favors. They have clearly adopted the corporate policy of keep quiet about bad news, but that rarely works in the long term. Also, that doesn't help the CLPS program either. I can easily see a member of Congress saying "The American taxpayers paid for this mission, how come we're being kept in the dark?" That could then lead to pressure on the agency.
Second, it's not a good comparison between long-duration, mature missions, and a short-term mission that was only expected to last about 10 days at the most and suffered a major problem at its start. We don't get daily updates from those other missions because everything is working well. NASA has been quick to release info when Voyager or Hubble have experienced problems, however.
We can all be sure that if they had good news to report, they would have been providing regular updates.
I've personally taught myself not to pay much attention to everything Jim says, especially when he makes a provocative remark. Because it has been shown that although he's knowledgeable in certain areas, he has his biases and he has been wrong on occasions.
Now - of course nobody expects a daily press release from every mission. That would be too much, and would require at least one employee to be dedicated to writing updates. I agree with that, and I personally never expected it. However, there's a catch. Once you promise daily updates, you better deliver then. (OK, you can argue that an aspiration isn't a promise, however when it's plainly written on your website, it gets treated as a promise). IM provided daily updates, even during the weekend, before that last Saturday. Then they skipped providing us an update on Saturday. AND on Sunday. People naturally wondered why's that silence and what's wrong, and the fact radio amateurs filled the gap with news, meant that there WAS actually news to report.
Luckily, today we got some images with a nice press release. Yet the truth is that still nothing is actually said *OFFICIALLY* about the obtained data volume and data rate, when in the meantime amateurs are making some nice educated guesses and offer their analysis. I've seen a couple of comments on Twitter where people think that Intuitive is not being completely honest with their shortcomings.
But let's put that aside... Jim mentions Juno and JWST. Funny, because there are websites where images are published in almost real time from both Juno and JWST ( I was very surprised that there's raw JWST feed, I don't think that was the case with Hubble!). Also, you can clearly see the data rate on DSN now. This is impossible to see with Odyssey as they're using another network.
Anyway - it was a bad example. We never had lingering questions during the past flybys of Io and Europa conducted by Juno. Raw images were published in almost real time, and it was clear everything worked as expected.
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We would very likely be getting very different updates if the mission were operating as planned. That's really the difference here. They're currently in triage mode trying to get whatever data they can with the very limited resources available, rather than being able to post new pictures every day.
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Looking again at the two pictures sent back in this thread (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=59696.msg2571566#msg2571566), I believe the ~430m descent photo was sent when they thought they had more time, and what looks like a very low quality ground photo was sent after they realized they had until Tuesday morning.
The first might have been 40KB to downlink, the second, 7KB or less. They didn't just use low resolution (400x300), but also set the jpeg compression very high.
It'd be a bit over 4 minutes to download the first pic, 45s to download the second. They have somewhere around 1440 minutes left.
Thanks. Interesting. I was thinking about it some more and I think that the Eaglecam selfie might be important in order to figure out why the lander tipped over and how to avoid it for the next mission. You can argue that the most important data that IM-1 can gather on this mission is how to make sure that it's next mission is a complete success.
The importance of the lunar surface image released today can't be under estimated. It's hard to call a CLPS mission without any images of the surface of the Moon a success. I know that some of the data is perhaps more important but the image is data in and of itself.
Incidentally, during Friday's press conference, NASA said that it had obtained a lot of very useful data before and during the landing.
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Yet the truth is that still nothing is actually said *OFFICIALLY* about the obtained data volume and data rate,
They don't have to provide this.
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Anyways, they are not flying missions for you and since you are not a US citizen paying taxes for some of these missions, you don't have voice in the matter or even an opinion to give.
Why do you assume that my country has absolutely no contribution to IM? When you make such assumptions, prepare to be proven VERY wrong. This is a private space endeavor, and this includes a lot of international participation. You'll be surprised where they come from.
Besides, I never made the "my taxes = my data" argument.
And it doesn't really matter. American space enthusiasts have strong opinion about ESA's missions and their data release policy. It's mutual. Everybody is free to have an opinion. Space fans are very passionate.
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I've personally taught myself not to pay much attention to everything Jim says, especially when he makes a provocative remark. Because it has been shown that although he's knowledgeable in certain areas, he has his biases and he has been wrong on occasions.
And are you right all the time?
Raw images were published in almost real time, and it was clear everything worked as expected.
That is exactly why you are not getting what you want.
Anyways, they are not flying missions for you and since you are not a US citizen paying taxes for some of these missions, you don't have voice in the matter or even an opinion to give.
Just to add to this discussion, as mentioned by others, this is crunch time. Making sure that everyone on forums and social media (US citizens or not) are happy would be a distraction at this point. It is important to appreciate the information that is being provided (especially given the circumstances) and not have a sense of entitlement that we are somehow owed up to the minute updates.
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Yet the truth is that still nothing is actually said *OFFICIALLY* about the obtained data volume and data rate,
They don't have to provide this.
They would probably provide this information if the question was asked by a reporter but no one asked that question on Friday. Perhaps that someone will ask at the next press conference.
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I hope that there is a way to "unfish" these fish-eye lens images.
It can be easily done with ffmpeg, but it's needed the FOV of the camera.
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I don't see solid evidence of the data rate they are achieving. Apparently it is limited. Hopefully they downlink some imagery from the 'Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies' payload. That data would belong to NASA, right?
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I hope that there is a way to "unfish" these fish-eye lens images.
It can be easily done with ffmpeg, but it's needed the FOV of the camera.
How about trial and error?
It is known that the leg elements are straight, so their rectified images can serve as feedback.
The attempt upthread seemed to overshoot a bit.
One could also compress the dynamic range, if that capability is available to reduce the saturated and dark areas.
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I think if they had photos to share over the weekend we might have got some updates. I think they might have only got those pictures yesterday once the 15 min radio reset was fixed.
Considering that during transit we received at least something from IM once a day (even if it was a one or two sentence tweet) makes the weekend gap in updates noticeable... They could have just said "we are still in radio contact but taking time to downlink data" might have been enough.
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Forum rules. Be rude, lose your post.
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Looks like DSN is now helping with the lander comms:
https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1762104038277906631
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Why do you assume that my country has absolutely no contribution to IM? When you make such assumptions, prepare to be proven VERY wrong. This is a private space endeavor, and this includes a lot of international participation. You'll be surprised where they come from.
Besides, I never made the "my taxes = my data" argument.
And it doesn't really matter. American space enthusiasts have strong opinion about ESA's missions and their data release policy. It's mutual. Everybody is free to have an opinion. Space fans are very passionate.
I said "some" of these missions
But yet you make posts like you are entitled to the photos and data.
No, just a few of them and they also have the same incorrect opinion as you.
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Looks like DSN is now helping with the lander comms:
https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1762104038277906631 (https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1762104038277906631)
For those that can't see the Twitter post, the image of the DSN activity says
Antenna 36
Source Lunar Node -1
Frequency band S
Data Rate 1.256 kb/sec
Power Received -160 dBm (1.0x10^-22 kW)
1.256 kbps = 565 kB/hr = 13.6 MB/day FWIW
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Forum rules. Be rude, lose your post.
Or quietly get blocked by readers. See PSA #4 in my profile for how to do it. My own block list has gotten 50% bigger solely while monitoring this thread over the last several days. Again, we should have updates vs discussion threads for this. Perhaps for all lunar lander missions, for now?
Power Received -160 dBm (1.0x10^-22 kW)
Ouch. That's like Voyager or New Horizons signal levels.
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Let's give them a break please! They have 1.25kbps download rate with only a few days of sunlight left. They really will be working hard to download the best data possible rather than downloading loads of photos that may or may not help their next spacecraft.
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https://twitter.com/amsatdl/status/1762268362703278399
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To be honest, I'm surprised that we can even get 1.25 kbps with an omni antenna pointed at the ground from the moon. That's actually impresive.
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https://twitter.com/SpaceTechLab/status/1762248901199909357
https://twitter.com/SpaceTechLab/status/1762248999128428790
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https://twitter.com/ILOA_Hawaii/status/1762203591962767780?s=20
https://twitter.com/ILOA_Hawaii/status/1762207839362470196
https://twitter.com/ILOA_Hawaii/status/1762259639641792916
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When I first started following this mission, I was thinking "plucky underdogs". But after watching them, I'm thinking "not the sharpest tools in the shed". Here are a few of their unforced errors:
- Building a tall, thin lander. There's are reason all the others are squat (except SLIM, which was *designed* to fall over). It's fine to buck conventional wisdom, but you need a good reason and it better work. They had neither.
- Forgetting to turn the laser on. Checklists, anyone?
- Finding out, *on the way to the moon*, that they did not have enough link margin for accurate navigation (no coherent operation). Link margin in free space is both easy to compute and hugely important. It's like they never analyzed the cruise phase at all with the ground network they actually had.
- Putting all their antennas on the top of their lander, so during cruise, when they point the engine to Earth, they lose comms. This is a problem a school kid can understand, and everyone else has addressed it for more than half a century.
- Going into an orbit with an unintended low perilune. It must have been *really* low, as they needed emergency action to *raise* the perilune into their descent orbit.
- Landing pads with sharp edges, not turned up. Then being surprised when they "stubbed their toe" - lots of previous missions have skidded at least somewhat, which helps with stability.
Overall, I think they were really, really lucky that it worked even as well as it did.
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Lou gives us a nice list of the five or six things that Intuitive Machines could have done differently and that negatively impacted the mission. For perspective, though, we need to consider the other umpteen-thousand things that had to go right so that IM could have the very desirable problem of soft-landing on the moon in an unintended orientation.
I don't think you can infer from this that the engineers at IM are "not the sharpest tools in the shed".
I think, more likely, they made some genuine unforced errors (the laser safety switch, for instance), but most of the things on this list can be explained as engineering tradeoffs that didn't work out for them *this time*. It's an awful lot to expect perfection first time and on a budget.
Intuitive Machines have gotten remarkably close to that. They should be celebrated for that.
I expect that they've learned a lot from this, and that IM-2 will be a smoother mission. Then they can concentrate on slaying the real monster that eats commercial Lunar missions - finding enough paying customers.
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- Building a tall, thin lander. There's are reason all the others are squat (except SLIM, which was *designed* to fall over). It's fine to buck conventional wisdom, but you need a good reason and it better work. They had neither.
When landing near a lunar pole the Earth is close to the horizon. A short lander that landed behind a boulder or in a depression would presumably risk not seeing Earth and therefore not being able to talk to it. So height could be an advantage in some other scenarios; you're benefiting from hindsight.
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Overall, I think they were really, really lucky that it worked even as well as it did.
Considering how they recovered from these flubs, I'd still call them "plucky underdogs". Besides some of it is on NASA, such as insisting on the hummocky and comm/power troublesome South Polar landing site against IM's better judgement, or not offering DSN tracking for the full mission or at least up to LOI, or failing to emphasize and promote the major goal of the mission, which was operating a methalox engine in deep space for the first time down to the lunar surface (ironically before SpaceX even gets one into LEO). Or maybe the SpaceX full up "test and break" paradigm is the new NASA.
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When I first started following this mission, I was thinking "plucky underdogs". But after watching them, I'm thinking "not the sharpest tools in the shed". Here are a few of their unforced errors:
- Building a tall, thin lander. There's are reason all the others are squat (except SLIM, which was *designed* to fall over). It's fine to buck conventional wisdom, but you need a good reason and it better work. They had neither.
that would be wrong.
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I'd love to hear more about those trades, Jim. If possible.
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The phases of lunar lander success, revisited:
https://thespacereview.com/article/4749/1
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or failing to emphasize and promote the major goal of the mission, which was operating a methalox engine in deep space for the first time down to the lunar surface (ironically before SpaceX even gets one into LEO).
Ah, that makes a lot more sense out of the official mission success criteria ending with landing.
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If "Tuesday Morning" is this Tuesday (tomorrow), IM-1 has maybe 5 floppy disks of data left available to pull.
However, that really doesn't mesh with payload operators talking about getting high res pics back. [1]
And Scott Tilley says it can't be the next Tuesday they meant, because the sun sets on Sunday [2]. There is no next Tuesday.
Things are confused. And it seems there will be no releases today to elucidate (it is now 9:30PM in Houston).
Hopefully tomorrow will bring clarity.
[1] https://www.twitter.com/ILOA_Hawaii/status/1762296578499572117
[2] https://twitter.com/coastal8049/status/1762255844761112999
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https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1762209806499094705
https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1762210946599080346
https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1762211825259528318
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I hope that there is a way to "unfish" these fish-eye lens images.
It can be easily done with ffmpeg, but it's needed the FOV of the camera.
How about trial and error?
It is known that the leg elements are straight, so their rectified images can serve as feedback.
The attempt upthread seemed to overshoot a bit.
One could also compress the dynamic range, if that capability is available to reduce the saturated and dark areas.
Without FOV or at least a reference image, every result would look "right" even if it is actually impossible. With ffmpeg I can reproject from fisheye (spherical) to equirectangular (flat), then extract any portion (spherical sector) to get a small. image, equivalent to what a normal non-fisheye camera would see, or even create an image suitable to be seen in VR viewers.
Is there any datasheet around for this camera? Test images taken on ground?
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next lunar landers design
;)
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https://twitter.com/nascom1/status/1762337527644733526
For those wondering, Madrid's DSS56 has just received a good downlink from LND1, a NASA payload on IM1. LND1 needs to be commanded to transmit through the lander. Good telemetry was received at its nominal 25Kbps before being switched off. This is its first contact since landing
8:43 PM · Feb 26, 2024
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https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1762209806499094705
Obviously, there is a lot of truth in this.
However, the more complicated you make something, the more there is to go wrong.
And personally, I still find it hard to come to terms with making the first and most important part of such missions - actually landing safely - overly complicated and dependent on perfect conditions which are not under our control.
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[...] I still find it hard to come to terms with making the first and most important part of such missions - actually landing safely [...]
The over-arching challenge for CLPS missions is to perform the mission tasks within tight budget constraints. Costs limit design choices.
Its likely Intuitive put emphasis (i.e. expended scarce resources) on their propulsion system. They developed a cryogenic liquid engine and a propellant feed system for it. Yes, their solution involved stacking spherical tanks vertically, resulting in a tall skinny lander. They believed they could handle that with landing GNC, and events proved them wrong this time. That doesn't mean the design is unworkable.
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https://twitter.com/goonhillyorg/status/1762417781536866450
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That doesn't mean the design is unworkable.
No, but it does mean the parameters for success are that much tighter.
It has to land almost completely vertically (no sideways component), and on a flat, relatively smooth surface.
As an aside, some years ago I managed a pharmaceutical manufacturing department, and many of the products we made were packed into blisters (heat-sealed between a layer of PVC and one of PVC-coated aluminium foil).
We were getting a high proportion of rejects, and when I looked into it I found that the rolls of aluminium were not coming in completely cylindrical, but 'stepped' or 'curved'. This meant that they didn't track properly on the machine, requiring manual intervention to fix the tracking as it occurred. It was the resulting overlap/displacement during sealing which was the source of rejects.
We held meetings, and the engineers won and set out to build an automatic tracking system to adjust the reel tracking feed as necessary while in use.
I was not happy with this, phoned the supplier, and told them what was wrong. They went crazy, and told me that the reels should never have been delivered to us like that. They collected the reels, rewound them, and set up their own investigation in to how it had happened for so long.
The moral I took from this is that the simplest approach is most often the best.
A microcontroller-based tracking system may well have worked - eventually. And most of the time.
The simplest solution - fixing the problem at source instead of trying to deal with it on the hoof - eliminated the issue completely.
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https://twitter.com/ILOA_Hawaii/status/1762291892883259799
https://twitter.com/ILOA_Hawaii/status/1762343079321981438
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That doesn't mean the design is unworkable.
No, but it does mean the parameters for success are that much tighter.
It has to land almost completely vertically (no sideways component), and on a flat, relatively smooth surface.
As an aside, some years ago I managed a pharmaceutical manufacturing department, and many of the products we made were packed into blisters (heat-sealed between a layer of PVC and one of PVC-coated aluminium foil).
We were getting a high proportion of rejects, and when I looked into it I found that the rolls of aluminium were not coming in completely cylindrical, but 'stepped' or 'curved'. This meant that they didn't track properly on the machine, requiring manual intervention to fix the tracking as it occurred. It was the resulting overlap/displacement during sealing which was the source of rejects.
We held meetings, and the engineers won and set out to build an automatic tracking system to adjust the reel tracking feed as necessary while in use.
I was not happy with this, phoned the supplier, and told them what was wrong. They went crazy, and told me that the reels should never have been delivered to us like that. They collected the reels, rewound them, and set up their own investigation in to how it had happened for so long.
The moral I took from this is that the simplest approach is most often the best.
I microcontroller-based tracking system may well have worked - eventually. And most of the time.
The simplest solution - fixing the problem at source instead of trying to deal with it on the hoof - eliminated the issue completely.
Your solution completely ignores what it took for the manufacturer to fix the issue. For all we know they implemented a microcontroller based tracking system to 'fix the issue at the source'. I obviously have no idea, just pointing out that your anecdote is incomplete.
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For all we know they implemented a microcontroller based tracking system to 'fix the issue at the source'. I obviously have no idea, just pointing out that your anecdote is incomplete.
It wasn't an anecdote. It was a statement of fact.
It was their job to produce completely cylindrical rolls, and they absolutely did have computerised equipment for producing it.
But a) it had somehow gone awry, and b) it was absolutely not the user's responsibility to try and utilise substandard (and very expensive) raw materials by creating Heath Robinson contraptions to manage it (and yet our engineers were happy to try).
As well as learning that the simplest solution usually is the best, a further learning point was that specialists (in this case engineers) can readily lose themselves down needless rabbit holes trying to solve problems - because they don't see the bigger picture.
That doesn't take anything away from their technical skills. Moving back on specific topic, getting IM-1 up there and landing it was a great achievement.
But it did fall over and compromise a large part of the overall mission.
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That doesn't take anything away from their technical skills. Moving back on specific topic, getting IM-1 up there and landing it was a great achievement.
But it did fall over and compromise a large part of the overall mission.
It was the simpler design. The problem was the loss of the lidar and substitution of the experimental one.
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It was the simpler design. The problem was the loss of the lidar and substitution of the experimental one.
The design was partly to utilise the available space in the launch module, and partly due to the overall payload balance.
The problem seems to have been the high centre of mass, and the risk of tipping unless landing under complete control in a vertical plane (and on a relatively level surface). Those flat landing feet have also been mentioned - of which IM-1 has more of than previous landers. Intuitive even coined a new word - 'tippier' - to explain what had happened, so it clearly was a problem.
Moving forward, the immediate options would seem to be persevere and get the vertical landing system sorted, or lower the centre of mass in relation to the leg span. IMO, of course.
Neither of those are simple. But one would be simpler than the other. IMO.
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I hope that there is a way to "unfish" these fish-eye lens images.
It can be easily done with ffmpeg, but it's needed the FOV of the camera.
How about trial and error?
It is known that the leg elements are straight, so their rectified images can serve as feedback.
The attempt upthread seemed to overshoot a bit.
One could also compress the dynamic range, if that capability is available to reduce the saturated and dark areas.
Without FOV or at least a reference image, every result would look "right" even if it is actually impossible. With ffmpeg I can reproject from fisheye (spherical) to equirectangular (flat), then extract any portion (spherical sector) to get a small. image, equivalent to what a normal non-fisheye camera would see, or even create an image suitable to be seen in VR viewers.
Is there any datasheet around for this camera? Test images taken on ground?
if anybody wants to give it a try with random input data...
https://community.theta360.guide/t/new-fisheye-to-equirectangular-opensource-converter-software/7031
An online converter would be better, but I can't find any one.
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Goldstone is currently communicating with what's labelled as Lunar Node 1. It's doing a lot of things at once.
Transmitting power is 20 kW. It is receiving at 1.256 kbps at -160 dBm. It is also receiving at 62.66 kbps and -130 dbM.
The latter is very interesting indeed. That's the minimum speed at which IM-1's high gain antenna transmits.
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Some new images have been published today:
https://www.intuitivemachines.com/im-1
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Moving forward, the immediate options would seem to be persevere and get the vertical landing system sorted, or lower the centre of mass in relation to the leg span. IMO, of course.
Neither of those are simple. But one would be simpler than the other. IMO.
That would be wrong, the first one is simple. Enable the lidar system before flight so it can operate.
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Some new images have been published today:
https://www.intuitivemachines.com/im-1
The update text, and the photos. Very high quality.
Flight Controllers continue to communicate with Odysseus. This morning, Odysseus efficiently sent payload science data and imagery in furtherance of the Company’s mission objectives. Flight controllers are working on final determination of battery life on the lander, which may continue up to an additional 10-20 hours.
The images included here are the closest observations of any spaceflight mission to the south pole region of the Moon. Odysseus is quite the photographer, capturing this image approximately 30 meters above the lunar surface while his main engine throttled down more than 24,000 mph. Another day of exploration on the south pole region of the Moon.
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That would be wrong, the first one is simple. Enable the lidar system before flight so it can operate.
That still doesn't lower the centre of mass/reduce the 'tippiness', though.
Thus, there is still the risk of tipping over for various reasons on future missions.
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The clarity we got today is that in their last few hours, it looks like they have their high gain antenna, which is 50x faster than the low gain. Fantastic news.
That turns the possible pull in these coming 10-20 hours from 5-10MB to 250-500MB.
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ffmpeg commandline to test to rectify fisheye inages:
ffmpeg -i input_file -vf v360=fisheye:equirect:id_fov=180 output_file
Replace 180 by camera FOV.
To tune camera pitch:
ffmpeg -i input.png -vf v360=fisheye:e:id_fov=180:pitch=-90 -y output.jpg
Then try viewing result in this panorama viewer:
https://renderstuff.com/tools/360-panorama-web-viewer/
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Moving forward, the immediate options would seem to be persevere and get the vertical landing system sorted, or lower the centre of mass in relation to the leg span. IMO, of course.
Neither of those are simple. But one would be simpler than the other. IMO.
That would be wrong, the first one is simple. Enable the lidar system before flight so it can operate.
Yep. it tipped over because it was using an emergency kluge proximity system to replace the non-functioning lidar proximity system. The kludge worked extremely well but not perfectly, so there was a small residual lateral motion. The engineers seem to think that the lidar system would have minimized the lateral motion. So as JIm said, the fix is simple: review and revise the formal pre-launch process and ensure that it is executed.
BTW, their ability to implement the kludge is worthy of a lot of respect. It's just a shame it was needed. Like Apollo 13, but fortunately with no lives on the line.
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Thus, there is still the risk of tipping over for various reasons on future missions.
That is the trade for less complex and less expensive design.
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That would be wrong, the first one is simple. Enable the lidar system before flight so it can operate.
That still doesn't lower the centre of mass/reduce the 'tippiness', though.
Thus, there is still the risk of tipping over for various reasons on future missions.
Sure, but if they had designed a flat lander and its control system failed due to its flatness (say due to oscillations or structural weakness), all of the post-hoc amateur analysts would be complaining that it was too flat.
The design team accepted the tippiness risk as a tradeoff for the advantages.
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[snip]
The design team accepted the tippiness risk as a tradeoff for the advantages.
I do want to remind that there is an entire new thread called CLPS Mission Design Tradeoffs (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=60434.0) that was created for just this kind of discussion.
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The clarity we got today is that in their last few hours, it looks like they have their high gain antenna, which is 50x faster than the low gain. Fantastic news.
That turns the possible pull in these coming 10-20 hours from 5-10MB to 250-500MB.
Is it so though? All images in high-resolution are from before the touchdown, and the only that looks like it was taken post-landing (or very close to the ground, judging by the shadow) is thumbnail-sized. Makes one wonder whether those were transmitted earlier - alternatively, it may be the cameras do not offer good imaging conditions in the horizontal orientation the lander is at now.
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The commentary has been frankly embarrassing, from many who should know better.
IM have landed their lander on the moon, in one piece, operating.
All hosted payloads have confirmed they have been able to communicate with their payloads and retrieve data.
It has not catastrophically lithobraked.
It did not fail during transit.
It landed within 1.5 km of its landing target (not 'the other side of the moon' as some seem to have been concerned).
Even after tipping over during landing, it did not catastrophically explode from punctured tanks, or have its avionics fail.
IM managed to bypass a loss-of-mission issue (albeit due to an apparent own-goal ground processing oversight) within hours of discovery and pull off a landing despite not having access to their altimeters. An issue only discovered during the final orbit prior to the original landing attempt.
They hosted a press-conference that was exceptionally open in discussing the state of the vehicle, details of issues encountered, and even what they think was the cause of those issues, mere tens of hours after landing.
Yet 90% of the thread has been complaining the livesteam was 'boring' without a flashy descent animation or live video, complaining about the lack of photos, complaining that vehicle data was not provided immediately and skipping any analysis (and the one piece they did provide - that they thought the vehicle was upright - turned out to be incorrect due to stale data that would have been caught with said skipped analysis), conspiracies over stock prices, and "tall lander fall over, why not make a wide lander, they are so dumb".
IM were rightly concerned with flying the mission and working with their customers (NASA and other hosted payloads) to operate their instruments, not with PR. PR is not free, in money or in time.
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...
The problem seems to have been the high centre of mass, and the risk of tipping unless landing under complete control in a vertical plane (and on a relatively level surface). Those flat landing feet have also been mentioned - of which IM-1 has more of than previous landers. Intuitive even coined a new word - 'tippier' - to explain what had happened, so it clearly was a problem.
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I don't think you know what you are talking about.
Stability of an object can be mathematically modeled, and exact parameters for slope angle, lateral motion tolerance, etc. can all be modeled. Do you know if IM did this work or not? You seem to be drawing conclusions on your subjective visual assessment of what the lander looks like.
If You have data from IM or other public sources on the exact location of the CG, please share it. Otherwise you have no basis for claiming the CG as the primary flaw. It is simply because you look at it, and judge it to be wrong because it looks wrong to you.
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all of the post-hoc amateur analysts would be complaining that it was too flat.
With respect, we don't have such an outcome to compare against, do we?
I believe almost everyone at Intuitive has accepted that it tipped over largely as a result of the tall/narrow design following several other issues.
We 'amateurs' (who have a valid interest) have simply pointed out that a shorter and/or wider structure (maybe with less snaggy feet) would be less likely to tip, and that previous historical missions have utilised this detail with some success.
Nothing should be taken away from what has been achieved. But then, the shortcomings should not be glossed over, either.
No level of expertise in the field is going to alter the simple fact that a tall/narrow structure (with sharp feet) is less stable than a shorter/wider one (with convex feet) when trying to land autonomously on a rough and uneven surface in reduced gravity. Attempting to land such a structure is clearly much more of a technical challenge than landing one which can't easily tip.
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I don't think you know what you are talking about.
Intuitive have stated that everything is 'tippier' on the moon (that was the word they coined, by the way), and went to lengths to explain why they came up with the design they had. They said they believed a foot had snagged due to the sideways component upon touchdown.
It. Tipped. Over.
I don't believe any historical lander has ever tipped over. Recently - and over 50 years since they were getting it right time after time - two landers with very different designs have done so (one of them is upside down).
Please don't be so rude when people express their opinions.
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The update text, and the photos. Very high quality.
Why did they blur out the logos?
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Intuitive have stated that everything is 'tippier' on the moon (that was the word they coined, by the way), and went to lengths to explain why they came up with the design they had. They said they believed a foot had snagged due to the sideways component upon touchdown.
It wasn't supposed to have lateral motion, plus it came in too quickly vertically.
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The clarity we got today is that in their last few hours, it looks like they have their high gain antenna, which is 50x faster than the low gain. Fantastic news.
That turns the possible pull in these coming 10-20 hours from 5-10MB to 250-500MB.
Is it so though? All images in high-resolution are from before the touchdown, and the only that looks like it was taken post-landing (or very close to the ground, judging by the shadow) is thumbnail-sized. Makes one wonder whether those were transmitted earlier - alternatively, it may be the cameras do not offer good imaging conditions in the horizontal orientation the lander is at now.
That they had high quality 30m photos since before landing and held them back until now, to fake having more, is a malice aforethought that I am unwilling to attribute to the team. I also assume the lander had other things to do at 30m altitude than orient its high gain antenna towards Earth to send back high resolution imagery.
That the image they released earlier of the lander at ~450m was low resolution and quality (~800px, maybe a 40KB jpeg when sent by the lander), and these 30m images are much higher quality (~2000px, maybe a 250KB jpeg when sent by the lander) also suggests an improvement in communications.
Notably you are right in that they have not come out and said of any picture "this is after landing" -- even the shadow picture was not labelled as such, and the text that accompanied it only says that the lander "sent images of its vertical descent".
As always, sunlight would be the best disinfectant for all this. Explaining the state of the camera (perhaps orientation is a factor), and explaining which images they've pulled and which ones they haven't and why.
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It wasn't supposed to have lateral motion, plus it came in too quickly vertically.
I know!
But the point is that making sure it doesn't have lateral motion - either from the descent, or due to landing on a slope or a rock - is much more of a technical challenge.
I'm not taking anything away from what has been achieved, and it is extremely interesting following these missions, but even with the lateral motion, a wider structure would have been less likely to tip.
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Odysseus is quite the photographer, capturing this image approximately 30 meters above the lunar surface while his main engine throttled down more than 24,000 mph.
That is quite a g-load. Interesting topic for the next presser.
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I don't believe any historical lander has ever tipped over. Recently - and over 50 years since they were getting it right time after time - two landers with very different designs have done so (one of them is upside down).
Using state supplied money. This isn't about the most capable lander possible. This is about the best lander for the money. If the lidar would have operated, we would not be having this discussion.
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It wasn't supposed to have lateral motion, plus it came in too quickly vertically.
I know!
But the point is that making sure it doesn't have lateral motion - either from the descent, or due to landing on a slope or a rock - is much more of a technical challenge.
Not really. Just a software. Easier to change than the structure. But in this case there an instrumentation "failure".
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I don't believe any historical lander has ever tipped over. Recently - and over 50 years since they were getting it right time after time - two landers with very different designs have done so (one of them is upside down).
Soviet mission Luna-23 tipped over.
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Soviet mission Luna-23 tipped over.
OK. But it is estimated that it came in too fast, and the impact damaged its drilling equipment. It still operated for a short time, I believe. And it was 50 years ago.
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The update text, and the photos. Very high quality.
Why did they blur out the logos?
If you mean why are the "Intuitive Machines" and "Columbia" logos whited out in the images, that's probably an exposure setting consequence. Watching the timelapse with different exposure settings in their in-orbit update video (https://youtube.com/watch?v=CyG5WtD8Gjk) shows that those logo areas (the whited out areas) are significantly more specularly reflective in the direction of the camera than the surrounding ones, and some of those timelapse frames display the exact same white out behavior.
If you're asking why the NASA logo is slightly blurry, that seems to be a focal plane consequence. It's also slightly blurry in the in-orbit timelapse frames.
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The commentary has been frankly embarrassing, from many who should know better.
IM have landed their lander on the moon, in one piece, operating.
All hosted payloads have confirmed they have been able to communicate with their payloads and retrieve data.
It has not catastrophically lithobraked.
It did not fail during transit.
It landed within 1.5 km of its landing target (not 'the other side of the moon' as some seem to have been concerned).
Even after tipping over during landing, it did not catastrophically explode from punctured tanks, or have its avionics fail.
IM managed to bypass a loss-of-mission issue (albeit due to an apparent own-goal ground processing oversight) within hours of discovery and pull off a landing despite not having access to their altimeters. An issue only discovered during the final orbit prior to the original landing attempt.
They hosted a press-conference that was exceptionally open in discussing the state of the vehicle, details of issues encountered, and even what they think was the cause of those issues, mere tens of hours after landing.
Yet 90% of the thread has been complaining the livesteam was 'boring' without a flashy descent animation or live video, complaining about the lack of photos, complaining that vehicle data was not provided immediately and skipping any analysis (and the one piece they did provide - that they thought the vehicle was upright - turned out to be incorrect due to stale data that would have been caught with said skipped analysis), conspiracies over stock prices, and "tall lander fall over, why not make a wide lander, they are so dumb".
IM were rightly concerned with flying the mission and working with their customers (NASA and other hosted payloads) to operate their instruments, not with PR. PR is not free, in money or in time.
I'm not sure what's so hard for some people to understand : you can praise certain aspects of a mission and criticize others.
Most of us recognize that going to the Moon for a first time (without any prior spaceflight experience, IM didn't even have a CubeSat before) and actually landing there is a marvelous achievement. But excuse me, how much sugar-coated layers of praise you need before a negative comment becomes palatable?
By the way - the latest public releases have been good and photos finally started to arrive. Which is enough. Yet it's worth pointing out that it's mostly high-quality descend imagery. We've yet to see even one good quality photo from the surface (so far there's only one low-quality thumbnail where you can see the shadow of the spacecraft). So far we can say Odysseus worked pretty well as a descend mission. As a surface mission, it remains to be seen. Looks like it mostly depends on whether they can deploy the EagleCam imager so we can get some better looking surface images.
Now - there are a lot of things that are true at the same time: it's a marvelous first-time landing, it's good it's transmitting data, descend imagery is good, surface imagery is almost non-existent (one photo so far), live coverage was sub-par compared to SLIM and Chandrayaan-3, the mistake of not flipping the LiDAR switch was stupid and possibly avoidable, the fact they were able to patch the software so quickly to use a different instrument is commendable, the landing was soft enough for the mission to survive, but not soft enough to not tip over.
Everything is true. People, however, have different opinions and measure different criteria differently. Most of us live in free countries. It's how democracy works. Don't expect synchronized clapping. We don't live in North Korea.
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Attempted to fix the distortion.
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We've yet to see even one good quality photo from the surface (so far there's only one low-quality thumbnail where you can see the shadow of the spacecraft). So far we can say Odysseus worked pretty well as a descend mission. As a surface mission, it remains to be seen. Looks like it mostly depends on whether they can deploy the EagleCam imager so we can get some better looking surface images.
The mission goal is to get hosted payloads to the surface, not to take pictured from the surface with it's descent cameras. That's already low on the priority list, and limited bandwidth and available power-on-time pushes it lower still.
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Hopefully the high gain antenna is indeed active and remains so. DSN Now is currently down, so that previously observed communication to a 34m dish at 62.66 kbps can't be publicly monitored at the moment.
Notably, someone that works at Canberra's DSN station characterized Lunar Node 1's transmission speed as 25 kbps (and said it was successfully received by the DSN at that speed). So the 62.66 kbps signal seen earlier today doesn't match Lunar Node 1. (Once again, it does match the lowest speed of IM-1 high gain antenna).
https://www.twitter.com/nascom1/status/1762337527644733526
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Attempted to fix the distortion.
I found this online dewarper, but can't get right parameters of V360 fisheye-to-equirectangular parameter for this kind of images (attached)
https://ffmpeg.lav.io/
id-fov is input diagonal FOV, then pitch, roll and yaw must be tuned, but can't understand how.
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I found this online dewarper, but can't get right parameters of V360 fisheye-to-equirectangular parameter for this kind of images (attached)
https://ffmpeg.lav.io/
id-fov is input diagonal FOV, then pitch, roll and yaw must be tuned, but can't understand how.
I used Blender (https://www.blender.org/)'s Motion Tracking manual lens correction (https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/movie_clip/tracking/clip/sidebar/track/camera.html#lens).
There's lots of tutorials on Youtube if anyone wants to be more accurate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjoYqG7fEgc
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I do want to say that the high resolution imagery just released does not incontrovertibly mean that it was received with the high gain antenna. The difference between the previous very low quality imagery and this new imagery that matches the quality of what was being released while in transit may well be accounted for by solving the antenna mode change problem that they discussed in the press conference.
At an estimated 250KB per photo to downlink at the quality observed, 5 high quality photos would be ~1.25MB. A significant portion of the per-day low gain downlink budget, but within possibility.
It's just I'd expect them to instead allocate that bandwidth to 31 pictures at the 800px/40KB resolution/quality we saw when they released the ~450m photo. (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=59696.0;attach=2262051;image) Or five landing pictures at that quality and 26 payload pictures for customers at that quality (or other desired payload data).
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Found (https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/experiment/display.action?id=IM-1-NOVA-01) SCALPSS camera data:
FLIR Chameleon3 with 3.2 MP CMOS sensors and 3.37 mm focal length lenses (Peau Productions GP33728 (https://www.peauproductions.com/products/3-37mm-f-2-8-87d-hfov-16mp-br-no-distortion))
The page says 87 degress FOV, but technical documentation (https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/pdf/10.2514/6.2021-0358) for the four SCALPSS camera provides these data:
- 7.1 mm by 5.3 mm image sensor
- 2048 by 1536 pixels (3.15 MP)
- lens focal length of 3.37 mm
- 93.1° by 76.8° FOV
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It's just I'd expect them to instead allocate that bandwidth to 31 pictures at the 800px/40KB resolution/quality we saw when they released the ~450m photo. (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=59696.0;attach=2262051;image) Or five landing pictures at that quality and 26 payload pictures for customers at that quality (or other desired payload data).
They may have already done that grab-the-thumbs operation, and then selected these images based on that to downlink in higher resolution as the most useful for calculating spacecraft state during descent.
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They may have already done that grab-the-thumbs operation, and then selected these images based on that to downlink in higher resolution as the most useful for calculating spacecraft state during descent.
They have almost certainly done the grab-the-thumbs operation for all the photos and all the payload cameras they have on the lander. It's just are the thumbs ~7KB each (the 'shadow' photo), ~40KB each (the ~450m photo), or what.
Edit: The spacecraft state point is a good one. That could be a good reason to allocate a significant amount of the downlink budget to these five photos in particular. Get some ground truth to compare their use of the NDL against.
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I don't think you know what you are talking about.
Intuitive have stated that everything is 'tippier' on the moon (that was the word they coined, by the way), and went to lengths to explain why they came up with the design they had. They said they believed a foot had snagged due to the sideways component upon touchdown.
It. Tipped. Over.
I don't believe any historical lander has ever tipped over. Recently - and over 50 years since they were getting it right time after time - two landers with very different designs have done so (one of them is upside down).
Please don't be so rude when people express their opinions.
Tippier has been a word in many dictionaries for many years.
The height of the lander is a feature not a bug. A jumbo jet with all aboard was once lost because a wash crew left tape over the pitot tube. The sole corrective action was to make sure no tape is covering the pitot tube.
If IM flies another mission, this time with no cover blocking the LiDAR, and it tips over, you are welcome to say you told us so.
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Data for ILO cameras:
Wide FOV Imager:
Circular FOV with full angle of 186°
Pixel resolution of ~0.06° per pixel
Bayer colour detector, circular image diameter 3000 pixels
Near-horizontal orientation to capture both lunar surface activity and lunar sky at certain times
Narrow FOV Imager:
Rectangular FOV, 39° x 51°
Pixel resolution of 0.013° per pixel
Bayer colour detector, 3000 pixels x 4000 pixels
Approx. 60° elevation relative to local south horizon, fixed azimuth angle over course of mission. Fixed azimuth set prior to launch to optimize for MWGC image capture from a given landing location in a given month.
Baffle for stray light mitigation – both from sun and lunar surface
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Update scheduled for tomorrow at 19:00 UTC
https://youtu.be/xa2n2-_hLPM
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"Stole" this quote below but apparently my quoting ability stinks. Sorry
When landing near a lunar pole the Earth is close to the horizon. A short lander that landed behind a boulder or in a depression would presumably risk not seeing Earth and therefore not being able to talk to it. So height could be an advantage in some other scenarios; you're benefiting from hindsight.
------End of stolen quote
My ramblings:
Post mission, it might be very interesting if IM provides more details about how the payload range finder was substittuted for the planned
laser range finder. If the two range finders had different boresight angles (is that the correct term to use) when compared to each other,
I can picture significant scaliing issues in interpreting the results. If the lander had no rotation motion (pitch, roll, yaw) the problem might
be easier than if there are pitch motions meaning derivatives of x,y,z would be needed and there would be different scaling factiors (so it seems
to me, anyways) in a non-linear environment ( oh the days of sin and cos and related stuff). How would such changes affect the closed loop
and phase margin of the control system as the lander was responding to "strange" (well, if you were expecting to work with a pony and a
draft horse showed up, you might be flumoxed to a degree)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Separately, somewhere (on this site and/or on twitter) it was pointed out the lander signal was being bounced off the moon's surface.
Based on that and other "research" (why not throw a buzz word or two around) I found on the internet (or possibly was reminded) the
a circularly polarized signal on one handedness is rejected if being received by an antenna of the opposite handedness. It would be
interesting to learn how this possibility was first considered especially since the intiail thinking was that the vehicle was upright.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
In addition, somewhere on this thread and/or website and/or twitter, some radiation patterns have shown up for both the low gain and
the high gain antenna. Depending on the exact location on the pattern, the signal degradation from optimum can, shall we (put on PR
hat) call "signififcant" resulting is a "less then optimal" situation.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It would also be interesting to know just how well the lunar surface was/is reflecting the received and transmitted signals.
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https://twitter.com/DJSnM/status/1762513241597734987
One thing I tried doing in Simple Rockets 2/Juno New Origins is landing Nova-C as close to the reported touchdown conditions as possible.
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I am guessing that most people in this thread would refuse to ever get on a bicycle.
But I am glad the world didn't stick to tricycles.
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Separately, somewhere (on this site and/or on twitter) it was pointed out the lander signal was being bounced off the moon's surface.
Based on that and other "research" (why not throw a buzz word or two around) I found on the internet (or possibly was reminded) the
a circularly polarized signal on one handedness is rejected if being received by an antenna of the opposite handedness. It would be
interesting to learn how this possibility was first considered especially since the intiail thinking was that the vehicle was upright.
If you think the spacecraft is okay but you're not getting a signal or as strong of a signal that you expect, you start checking the ground configuration because it's easier to change the ground configuration than the spacecraft. As a part of troubleshooting, you might try some off nominal settings, such as opposite polarity. I've worked on a few missions in which (unfortunately) there were problems such as an antenna that was shared with other missions was not properly reconfigured to the configuration for my mission. We also had on occasion some piece of information in the documentation that the ground station was using was inconsistent with the documentation that was used in building the spacecraft.
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I am guessing that most people in this thread would refuse to ever get on a bicycle.
But I am glad the world didn't stick to tricycles.
That doesn't mean a unicycle is therefore the best option ;)
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I am guessing that most people in this thread would refuse to ever get on a bicycle.
But I am glad the world didn't stick to tricycles.
That doesn't mean a unicycle is therefore the best option ;)
Wasn't one of the Russian Luna landers just one leg? or was that an impactor?
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DSN Now is back online. No IM-1 related activity.
New tweet from ILOA about ILO-X:
Our ILO-X on @Int_Machines received WFoV images (being released Thursday) that include portions of lunar landscape, regolith / dust, Sun & the Odysseus lander – which continues to help confirm the lander’s orientation, and contains other valuable info -- iloa.org/ilo-x-precursor
https://www.twitter.com/ILOA_Hawaii/status/1762555159006363750
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Eric Berger's writeup for Ars:
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/it-turns-out-that-odysseus-landed-on-the-moon-without-any-altimetry-data/
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Eric Berger's writeup for Ars:
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/it-turns-out-that-odysseus-landed-on-the-moon-without-any-altimetry-data/
I mean, this is about as transparent as you can get.
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Eric Berger's tweets that accompanied the above article (https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/it-turns-out-that-odysseus-landed-on-the-moon-without-any-altimetry-data/): (the F9 point I believe is not in the article)
I visited Intuitive Machines on Tuesday wondering whether the Odysseus mission was a success or a failure. I left without any doubts.
A few notes:
The mission experienced 11 "crises," including nearly being lost a couple of hours after launch. The company's CEO, Steve Altemus, told me the pinpoint precision of the Falcon 9 rocket's push toward the Moon afforded IM the time to address a star tracker problem.
Additionally, while NASA's NDL payload worked well as a backup for entry descent and landing telemetry, Odysseus' flight computer couldn't actually process the data in real time. So the spacecraft landed without ANY altimetry data. Which is remarkable.
https://www.twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1762598026193870874
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Eric Berger's writeup for Ars:
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/it-turns-out-that-odysseus-landed-on-the-moon-without-any-altimetry-data/
"Based upon data downloaded from the spacecraft and imagery from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which flew over the landing site, Intuitive Machines has determined that the lander came down to the surface and likely skidded. This force caused one of its six landing legs to snap. Then, for a couple of seconds, the lander stood upright before toppling over due to the failed leg.
The company has an incredible photo of this moment showing the lander upright, with the snapped leg and the engine still firing. Altemus plans to publicly release this photo Wednesday."
Wow.
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Apologies if I missed it earlier in the discussion: have there been attempts to bounce lasers off the IM-1 Laser Retroreflector Array? Given the assumed lander orientation is there any hope of a return signal?
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You haven't missed anything: there's been no mention of it. I bet we'll get some updates in the next briefing on what each payload was able to do, at least the six NASA payloads (https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/clps/six-nasa-instruments-will-fly-to-moon-on-intuitive-machines-lander/), of which the retroreflector is one. If they don't provide it in their opening comments, that'll be a good question for any reporters reading this to ask (assuming NSF isn't able to get someone into the call).
EDIT 1: Here's the LRA description and an image of the module. (https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/experiment/display.action?id=IM-1-NOVA-03) Those corner cubes are all mounted on a single module, so they could have the bad luck of it simply not being visible from Earth. But, I believe it's designed for illumination from orbit, e.g. LRO, and one of the NASA reps in the last presser noted that they could still hit it from LRO even if it was off to the side.
EDIT 2: and from Eric Berger's new article above (the ArsTechnica one):
As a result, the Intuitive Machines team expects to receive good data from five of the six NASA payloads on board. Only the Stereo Cameras for the Lunar Plume-Surface Studies experiment, intended to capture the effects of the lander’s engine plume as it interacted with the lunar surface, are not responding. Altemus said he believes this payload was damaged during the landing process. Most of the commercial payloads are working as intended.
So, they likely got data from LRA. EDIT 3: OK, wise guy "mn", got data from the LRA mission. SMH.
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Apologies if I missed it earlier in the discussion: have there been attempts to bounce lasers off the IM-1 Laser Retroreflector Array? Given the assumed lander orientation is there any hope of a return signal?
The retroreflector would reflect any incoming light directly back to the source regardless of angle (within the design limits), so the angle makes no difference as long as it is visible.
Edit:
https://www.intuitivemachines.com/_files/ugd/7c27f7_51f84ee63ea744a9b7312d17fefa9606.pdf
Based on the image on page 28, it seems the retroreflector is on the top solar panel which is now on it's side, so maybe facing earth and unobstructed? I have no idea.
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And is there clarity on the slope of the lunar surface on which it landed? It is common to express a slope as a 'grade' like 12%, which is the ratio of the vertical rise and horizontal run. That's different than a slope expressed as an angle like 12° (degrees).
12% ~= 6.8°
12° ~= 21%
Berger describes it as, "a 12 percent slope of the terrain." That's steep if you're towing a heavy load, but shouldn't be intimidating for a lunar lander.
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With a 12 deg. slope even if the lander had come down vertically one of the legs would have caught before the others. The original landing site had a small margin of error for slopes, and required better than the 1.5 km accuracy achieved. They literally landed on the edge of a crater. This was not a forgiving terrain for such a lander as this one.
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You haven't missed anything: there's been no mention of it. I bet we'll get some updates in the next briefing on what each payload was able to do, at least the six NASA payloads (https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/clps/six-nasa-instruments-will-fly-to-moon-on-intuitive-machines-lander/), of which the retroreflector is one. If they don't provide it in their opening comments, that'll be a good question for any reporters reading this to ask (assuming NSF isn't able to get someone into the call).
EDIT 1: Here's the LRA description and an image of the module. (https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/experiment/display.action?id=IM-1-NOVA-03) Those corner cubes are all mounted on a single module, so they could have the bad luck of it simply not being visible from Earth. But, I believe it's designed for illumination from orbit, e.g. LRO, and one of the NASA reps in the last presser noted that they could still hit it from LRO even if it was off to the side.
EDIT 2: and from Eric Berger's new article above (the ArsTechnica one):
As a result, the Intuitive Machines team expects to receive good data from five of the six NASA payloads on board. Only the Stereo Cameras for the Lunar Plume-Surface Studies experiment, intended to capture the effects of the lander’s engine plume as it interacted with the lunar surface, are not responding. Altemus said he believes this payload was damaged during the landing process. Most of the commercial payloads are working as intended.
So, they likely got data from LRA.
I don't think there is any data to get from the lra, it doesn't have any data, its just a fancy mirror.
Edit: 'expects to receive...'
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As they are close to the pole the mid-day Sun direction and Earth direction will be somewhat similar. We were told that the top-mounted solar panel was facing away from the Sun and couldn't generate power, so it is also facing away from Earth at least to some extent. But I don't think the view of Earth is essential because the array is designed to work with a laser fired from orbit (like LRO's recent acquisition of a reflection from the Chandrayaan 3 reflector). It could be tricky to get that angle right - i would think the chances are small. At any rate there will be no attempt until the surface mission is over, as was the case for Chandrayaan 3.
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This was not a forgiving terrain for such a lander as this one.
Especially so since it landed hard, and with an unintended horizontal velocity vector.
That's not taking anything away from what has been achieved, but that unforgiving terrain compounded the risks inherent in IM-1's overall physical design.
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Eric Berger's writeup for Ars:
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/it-turns-out-that-odysseus-landed-on-the-moon-without-any-altimetry-data/
I mean, this is about as transparent as you can get.
They invited in a friendly journalist.
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That's not taking anything away from what has been achieved, but that unforgiving terrain compounded the risks inherent in IM-1's overall physical design.
Nope, many other lander configurations would have had problems too.
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Nope, many other lander configurations would have had problems too.
Nope. One that was 'tippier' would have had more problems.
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Nope, many other lander configurations would have had problems too.
Nope. One that was 'tippier' would have had more problems.
Wrong. Stop trying to save face. Many would have had broken legs too.
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Many would have had broken legs too.
Nope. 'Would have' isn't the same as did. It is speculation and imagination.
Many of the early landers would - if they had experienced such a less-than-terminal landing - have merely tilted slightly instead of falling right over. Their squat design would have precluded it, even if it wasn't an intentional design feature.
Falling over wasn't a design feature of IM-1, but it's tall profile made it possible.
And incidentally, I have no 'face to save'. I merely have an opinion that has been shared by others and - more significantly - validated by Intuitive's explanation about what happened.
They've achieved a lot, and that is to be admired, but the lander's profile was still - IMO - a mistake.
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And is there clarity on the slope of the lunar surface on which it landed? It is common to express a slope as a 'grade' like 12%, which is the ratio of the vertical rise and horizontal run. That's different than a slope expressed as an angle like 12° (degrees).
12% ~= 6.8°
12° ~= 21%
Berger describes it as, "a 12 percent slope of the terrain." That's steep if you're towing a heavy load, but shouldn't be intimidating for a lunar lander.
The User Guide (page 12) (https://www.intuitivemachines.com/_files/ugd/7c27f7_458cf85ba6e94ba18f33702dc2c326af.pdf) states it can handle up to a 10° slope.
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Eric Berger's writeup for Ars:
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/it-turns-out-that-odysseus-landed-on-the-moon-without-any-altimetry-data/
I mean, this is about as transparent as you can get.
They invited in a friendly journalist.
Whether the journalist treats it positively or negatively, the facts revealed in the article were a significant exercise in transparency and should be lauded. There are very few aerospace companies that I can imagine allowing this kind of article -- from any journalist.
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Eric Berger's writeup for Ars:
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/it-turns-out-that-odysseus-landed-on-the-moon-without-any-altimetry-data/
I mean, this is about as transparent as you can get.
They invited in a friendly journalist.
All of the press has been positive about this mission. I don't know of any journalist that are unfriendly to Intuitive Machines.
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Eric Berger's writeup for Ars:
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/it-turns-out-that-odysseus-landed-on-the-moon-without-any-altimetry-data/
I mean, this is about as transparent as you can get.
They invited in a friendly journalist.
Whether the journalist treats it positively or negatively, the facts revealed in the article were a significant exercise in transparency and should be lauded. There are very few aerospace companies that I can imagine allowing this kind of article -- from any journalist.
I don't doubt that Altemus invited Berger because he was more likely to give a sympathetic hearing than some space journalists I can think of.
But on the whole I think the space community and the public are better off for that on-site visit taking place. He could have waited for the presser tomorrow to divulge all this, in a more controlled setting.
I wish there had been a little more of this transparency last week and over the weekend.
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Eric Berger's tweets that accompanied the above article (https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/it-turns-out-that-odysseus-landed-on-the-moon-without-any-altimetry-data/): (the F9 point I believe is not in the article)
I visited Intuitive Machines on Tuesday wondering whether the Odysseus mission was a success or a failure. I left without any doubts.
A few notes:
The mission experienced 11 "crises," including nearly being lost a couple of hours after launch. The company's CEO, Steve Altemus, told me the pinpoint precision of the Falcon 9 rocket's push toward the Moon afforded IM the time to address a star tracker problem.
Additionally, while NASA's NDL payload worked well as a backup for entry descent and landing telemetry, Odysseus' flight computer couldn't actually process the data in real time. So the spacecraft landed without ANY altimetry data. Which is remarkable.
https://www.twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1762598026193870874
I don't know enough of the details of just how Odysseus was developed to offer an informed opinion on this, but . . .
I do wonder, if the CLPS award had been - oh, I don't know, 100%, or even 50% larger - whether this mission would have had 11 all-hands-on-deck crises to solve, rather than some significantly smaller number of them.
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They've achieved a lot, and that is to be admired, but the lander's profile was still - IMO - a mistake.
That is uninformed opinion. The other constraints are more important.
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Many of the early landers would - if they had experienced such a less-than-terminal landing - have merely tilted slightly instead of falling right over. Their squat design would have precluded it, even if it wasn't an intentional design feature.
wrong, you have no data to support that, You don't know if their legs would not have broken.
Broken leg made it fall over and not slim design.
Also, don't know effects of engine not shutting down had in the role of falling over.
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Many would have had broken legs too.
Nope. 'Would have' isn't the same as did. It is speculation and imagination.
Many of the early landers would - if they had experienced such a less-than-terminal landing - have merely tilted slightly instead of falling right over. Their squat design would have precluded it, even if it wasn't an intentional design feature.
Falling over wasn't a design feature of IM-1, but it's tall profile made it possible.
And incidentally, I have no 'face to save'. I merely have an opinion that has been shared by others and - more significantly - validated by Intuitive's explanation about what happened.
They've achieved a lot, and that is to be admired, but the lander's profile was still - IMO - a mistake.
Uhhh, if a landing is "less-than-terminal," I don't think it's a landing. Perhaps you meant "optimal."
And, to paraphrase an excellent NSFer, you failed to "quietly impress grammar pedants" with your use of " it's " instead of " its " in your third paragraph.
Pardon me for being petty and pedantic. Perhaps it was triggered by your insistent opinion that the tall aspect ratio of the IM lander was "a mistake." Perhaps we should be more charitable in our analyses of one another.
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That is uninformed opinion.
But one based on the simple laws of Physics, so one can only conclude that anyone disputing it is disputing those laws of Physics.
Intuitive themselves have confirmed that the high centre of mass was ultimately due to the weight distribution necessary for the lander and the available space in the launch container.
A perfectly controlled vertical landing wouldn't have mattered. One with a sideways vector would - and did.
And this also raises the question over understanding what 'uninformed' means.
Perhaps it is similar to the word 'tippier' only being in the American dictionary?
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You don't know if their legs would not have broken.
The broken leg isn't the issue. The height of the lander and the overall design is.
If a leg had broken off, say, one of the Apollo lunar landers, it would have been almost impossible for it to tip over - the design precluded it. It would have just tilted by about 30-40 degrees. It would have been useless, of course, but it wouldn't have fallen over.
The Apollo legs were designed for a heavier landing anyway. The lander was heavier, and they played safe.
The issue here is that the IM-1 lander was already more likely to tip if it had a sideways movement on touchdown. Laws of Physics in that reduced gravity and all that. 'Tippier' was the American word used.
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Eric Berger's writeup for Ars:
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/it-turns-out-that-odysseus-landed-on-the-moon-without-any-altimetry-data/
I mean, this is about as transparent as you can get.
They invited in a friendly journalist.
Whether the journalist treats it positively or negatively, the facts revealed in the article were a significant exercise in transparency and should be lauded. There are very few aerospace companies that I can imagine allowing this kind of article -- from any journalist.
From the article:
"But I got the sense he invited me to the company's offices Tuesday because he was itching to tell someone—to tell the world—that although Odysseus had toppled over after touching down, the mission was, in his words, an absolute success. After more than an hour of speaking with Altemus, I believe him."
There you go, he knew he was being used "to tell the world... the mission was an absolute success" and just went along with it. At that point, he admitted that he was a spokesperson for the company, not an objective journalist. Maybe he could have asked them some tough questions, like why they stated that the lander "was in excellent health" when in the article he now states "Altemus said the mission experienced 11 crises."
Let's not be naive, they picked him because they knew he would write a positive story.
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I wish there had been a little more of this transparency last week and over the weekend.
Why do you think that this is transparency rather than spin?
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Perhaps we should be more charitable in our analyses of one another.
In my opinion, the high centre of mass was a mistake. Not an omission, but just a poor choice for whatever reasons of space constraints and mass balance of the payload, etc.
It wouldn't have mattered if a perfectly vertical soft landing on an almost flat surface had been effected as intended, but I think we can all agree that that didn't happen. And I think we all agree it did fall over partly as a result of a sideways velocity component (not to mention landing on a slope), thus compromising part of the mission.
A wider and lower lander would have been less affected.
It is what it is. Hopefully, they will learn from it for next time - whatever they decide to do.
And I am fully aware of the usage of the apostrophe. It was what is known as a typo - I assume US dictionaries have a definition of that word, too?
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That is uninformed opinion.
But one based on the simple laws of Physics, so one can only conclude that anyone disputing it is disputing those laws of Physics.
Intuitive themselves have confirmed that the high centre of mass was ultimately due to the weight distribution necessary for the lander and the available space in the launch container.
A perfectly controlled vertical landing wouldn't have mattered. One with a sideways vector would - and did.
And this also raises the question over understanding what 'uninformed' means.
Perhaps it is similar to the word 'tippier' only being in the American dictionary?
Please read Eric Berger's article on ArsTechnica. The IM-1 team provided a complete explanation. The kludge workaround for the non-functional lidar caused not only a small lateral velocity but also a largish vertical velocity. The lander slammed down fairly hard and broke a leg. Yes it fell over. A different form factor might well have suffered a different failure from a 3 m/s vertical velocity landing. The problem was the non-functional lidar.
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In my opinion, the high centre of mass was a mistake. Not an omission, but just a poor choice for whatever reasons of space constraints and mass balance of the payload, etc.
Again, uninformed. You can't even say it was a poor choice much less a mistake without knowing the other trades.
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There's a few newly registered folks who have only commented on IM-1, often pretty concern-trollish and ignorant. I'm HOPING this isn't about stock prices. SPAC sucks (although yeah, I understand why the companies basically had to do it).
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And I think we all agree it did fall over partly as a result of a sideways velocity component (not to mention landing on a slope), thus compromising part of the mission.
Wrong. It fell over due to broken leg vs tipping over.
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The problem was the non-functional lidar.
Part of the problem.
I have read that article - I do read them, you know. But just because someone says something doesn't necessarily make it right, especially when they have an understandable bias.
I mean, you're not going to get mission specialists (or their supporters) putting their own projects down. Not until they're ex-employees, at any rate.
Look. As I have said several times, what has been achieved is great. I love this stuff. But it wasn't perfect as a first try, and as I said in my first ever post here: I was surprised at how tall the lander was compared to its leg span. Seriously, I was. And so have many others been.
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Wrong. It fell over due to broken leg vs tipping over.
Nope. For one thing, you weren't saying that yesterday before you knew about the broken leg.
For another, as I have pointed out several times, the earlier squat landers simply couldn't have fallen over if a leg had come off. They'd still probably have been unusable, but they would just tilt until the lander body touched ground.
Like it or not, the taller, higher centre of gravity design with six legs was more likely to fall over if a leg came off. And that is what happened (even if the explanation is different now to what Intuitive initially stated, with it snagging a rock or something).
What they have achieved is admirable. But - in my opinion - the lander design was flawed (accidentally) for the reasons repeatedly given. A lander of an earlier design would likely not have tipped over given what happened here.
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I wish there had been a little more of this transparency last week and over the weekend.
Why do you think that this is transparency rather than spin?
Can't call it "spin" when you release nothing at all! (As was the case on Sat. and Sun.)
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There's a few newly registered folks who have only commented on IM-1
Yes, I joined because I was following the IM-1 mission and happened across this site while I was looking for information about it.
The IM-1 mission is the only one I wanted to comment on.
I did have misgivings about joining - I know precisely how forums (and certain of their denizens) work. The ready usage of the word 'troll' being directed at people certain users don't agree with being a prime example.
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Jeff Foust is a little critical:
https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1762623375933857861
Eric Berger responds:
https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1762658970441810250
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A lander of an earlier design would likely not have tipped over given what happened here.
And a squatter lander could not have carried the same payloads, have the same design life or intended link margins.
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[...] just because someone says something doesn't necessarily make it right [...]
Thank-you, that's really well phrased. Others have been trying to express that as well; apparently with little positive effect.
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And a squatter lander could not have carried the same payloads, have the same design life or intended link margins.
And a taller one with a narrower base would be more likely to tip.
It's horses for courses.
Doesn't it occur to you that we both might have valid points as far as the lander design is concerned? That neither of us is wrong?
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Thank-you, that's really well phrased. Others have been trying to express that as well; apparently with little positive effect.
Yes. I think it is because they strongly believe that simply because they are saying something, they are right. That seems to be a prevalent attitude from what I've seen in my short time here.
My opinions are just that. Opinions. But ones shared by others, it must be said.
;)
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And a squatter lander could not have carried the same payloads, have the same design life or intended link margins.
And a taller one with a narrower base would be more likely to tip.
It's horses for courses.
Doesn't it occur to you that we both might have valid points as far as the lander design is concerned? That neither of us is wrong?
No, The design of this lander was not a mistake. It was designed to accommodate the payloads and the landing location, with accepted risk.
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And opinions can be wrong
But less so when they are based on the laws of physics. At the very least, they might have some credibility.
It's when certain people insist they know best and diss everything else in an aggressive and offensive manner where the issues really lie.
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But less so when they are based on the laws of physics. At the very least, they might have some credibility.
Physics drove this specific design
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No, The design of this lander was not a mistake. It was designed to accommodate the payloads and the landing location, with accepted risk.
No. The lander had a greater risk of tipping over (laws of Physics again), and in spite of the constraints forced upon the mission specialists pushing them in that direction, it is my opinion that it was not the best design based on past landing craft designs.
In that sense, the design was - and has proved to have been - well, let's say a 'mistake' as opposed to a genuine error.
It may well be they will have to persevere with it in future missions due to the same constraints. But it will mean the navigation and landing systems and software will have to be improved considerably, not to mention quality control (as in, turning things on).
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In that sense, the design was - and has proved to have been - well, let's say a 'mistake' as opposed to a genuine error.
Again, a wrong opinion. This wasn't "proof".
It may well be they will have to persevere with it in future missions due to the same constraints. But it will mean the navigation and landing systems and software will have to be improved considerably, not to mention quality control (as in, turning things on).
Wrong again. Only quality control.
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Physics drove this specific design
To make it 'tippier'?
If that really was the case (and if we want to persist with literal word play), then it really was a major error. But that was not the case in reality.
The simple fact - and it is an absolute fact - is that a lander with height greater than its leg span is less stable than one which has a wider leg span for that same height. The wider, the better, of course (within sensible limits).
I know they had space constraints in the capsule, so please let's not go in that circle again.
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Again, a wrong opinion. This wasn't "proof".
Wrong again. Only quality control.
Come on, Jim. You are assuming that if the Lidar had been operational then it would have been a perfect landing. We don't know that because it wasn't working.
And the design has been proved/proven to have been flawed because it did tip over. Even if the high centre of mass wasn't the main fault, a leg breaking off (as we now know, instead of just snagging a rock as previously stated) is hardly a premium feature.
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Physics drove this specific design
To make it 'tippier'?
If that really was the case (and if we want to persist with literal word play), then it really was a major error. But that was not the case in reality.
The simple fact - and it is an absolute fact - is that a lander with height greater than its leg span is less stable than one which has a wider leg span for that same height. The wider, the better, of course (within sensible limits).
I know they had space constraints in the capsule, so please let's not go in that circle again.
Anyone that has messed with lunar landing simulations can tell you that ending up crashed at high speed or upside down is incredibly easy even if you have a squat lander. Lunar landing is incredibly unforgiving. Its going to be easier to fix the landing navigation and sequence than to redesign the entire system to gain a small amount of tip resistance. And most of the methods to accomplish that potential trade off add a lot of mass, which compounds into a much heavier system overall. Deployable mechanisms add risk as well. And you can't just make a fixed base larger due to payload fairing constraints for the launchers available.
You appear to be the primary driver of this circle. Double posting without further input is not a good look. Neither is citing yourself when saying how "many others" share your oppinion.
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The simple fact - and it is an absolute fact - is that a lander with height greater than its leg span is less stable than one which has a wider leg span for that same height. The wider, the better, of course (within sensible limits).
Irrelevant. The form factor, instrument requirements, landing location, propulsion system, weight, costs, did not allow for wider design.
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.
I am not citing myself. I am simply referring to my consistent opinion throughout.
I am not 'double posting'. I am replying to those who have double posted replies to my comments. Thus, I have double replies to double comments.
I am only the 'primary driver' as a result of 'primary insults' (for want of a better expression) from others.
Look. I will quietly walk away and leave you all to it. I knew from the outset when I saw the forum layout what would happen - I know full well all forums have resident 'experts' who automatically oppose new members right from the outset, and others who don't like comments except from those they 'like'.
Have fun, everyone.
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Question:
Could a lander be designed low and squat but launch vertical in the payload fairing? It's not like it has to land in the same orientation as launch. (So it would only be wide in one direction, not perfect but perhaps better than tall and skinny)
Of course that probably brings with it a whole set of issues with load paths being different for launch vs landing, but how big of a challenge is that?
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There you go, he knew he was being used "to tell the world... the mission was an absolute success" and just went along with it. At that point, he admitted that he was a spokesperson for the company, not an objective journalist. Maybe he could have asked them some tough questions, like why they stated that the lander "was in excellent health" when in the article he now states "Altemus said the mission experienced 11 crises."
Let's not be naive, they picked him because they knew he would write a positive story.
I'm not sure the story was positive. In order to overcome 11 crises, you need to *have* 11 crises - and what caused that? Many seemed self-induced. Forgot to turn the laser on? Star tracker didn't work on initial settings, but no sun sensors or backup settings, turning an in-flight update into a mission-threatening emergency? Link margin not good enough for navigation? How can this be a surprise? - there is no indication anything was wrong with the hardware - didn't they even do the calculations? Plus no antennas facing one hemisphere?
Overcoming 1 crisis in real time makes you a steely-eyed missile man. Overcoming 11 crises makes you a careless hip-shooting space cowboy. I don't know about you, but if a commercial airline bragged about how their pilots overcame 11 in-flight emergencies before crashing the plane (even though no one was killed), there is no way I'm flying on their airline. I want one that doesn't have 11 in-flight emergencies in the first place.
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Question:
Could a lander be designed low and squat but launch vertical in the payload fairing? It's not like it has to land in the same orientation as launch. (So it would only be wide in one direction, not perfect but perhaps better than tall and skinny)
Of course that probably brings with it a whole set of issues with load paths being different for launch vs landing, but how big of a challenge is that?
I think these are worthy questions, but it's worth noting (again) that there is a now quite healthy thread (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=60434.0) that was recently created for just such questions in the (clearly vain) hope of keeping the main mission thread more about mission updates.
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Question:
Could a lander be designed low and squat but launch vertical in the payload fairing? It's not like it has to land in the same orientation as launch. (So it would only be wide in one direction, not perfect but perhaps better than tall and skinny)
Of course that probably brings with it a whole set of issues with load paths being different for launch vs landing, but how big of a challenge is that?
A lander for the south pole cannot be low and squat. It must be tall enough to support vertical solar panels, since the Sun is on the horizon. Earth is also on the horizon, so you your antenna needs to be fairly high above the ground to see Earth and to avoid multipath problems.
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The old Surveyors had a solar panel and an antenna up high and still had a low center of mass.
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The old Surveyors had a solar panel and an antenna up high and still had a low center of mass.
Sure. not low and squat.
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You haven't missed anything: there's been no mention of it. I bet we'll get some updates in the next briefing on what each payload was able to do, at least the six NASA payloads (https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/clps/six-nasa-instruments-will-fly-to-moon-on-intuitive-machines-lander/), of which the retroreflector is one. If they don't provide it in their opening comments, that'll be a good question for any reporters reading this to ask (assuming NSF isn't able to get someone into the call).
EDIT 1: Here's the LRA description and an image of the module. (https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/experiment/display.action?id=IM-1-NOVA-03) Those corner cubes are all mounted on a single module, so they could have the bad luck of it simply not being visible from Earth. But, I believe it's designed for illumination from orbit, e.g. LRO, and one of the NASA reps in the last presser noted that they could still hit it from LRO even if it was off to the side.
EDIT 2: and from Eric Berger's new article above (the ArsTechnica one):
As a result, the Intuitive Machines team expects to receive good data from five of the six NASA payloads on board. Only the Stereo Cameras for the Lunar Plume-Surface Studies experiment, intended to capture the effects of the lander’s engine plume as it interacted with the lunar surface, are not responding. Altemus said he believes this payload was damaged during the landing process. Most of the commercial payloads are working as intended.
So, they likely got data from LRA. EDIT 3: OK, wise guy "mn", got data from the LRA mission. SMH.
If anyone got data from the LRA wouldn't it be NASA not IM? Wouldn't NASA announce it? Or you think NASA wants to let IM announce it?
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I am not citing myself. I am simply referring to my consistent opinion throughout.
<snip>
I’m fairly confident that everybody that reads this forum is aware of your exact stance (pun intended).
Can we move along now?
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A lander for the south pole cannot be low and squat. It must be tall enough to support vertical solar panels, since the Sun is on the horizon. Earth is also on the horizon, so you your antenna needs to be fairly high above the ground to see Earth and to avoid multipath problems.
Most all the announced challenges that happened after it fell over are related to the above points, which is to be expected, but interesting.
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Eric Berger's writeup for Ars:
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/it-turns-out-that-odysseus-landed-on-the-moon-without-any-altimetry-data/
I mean, this is about as transparent as you can get.
They invited in a friendly journalist.
Whether the journalist treats it positively or negatively, the facts revealed in the article were a significant exercise in transparency and should be lauded. There are very few aerospace companies that I can imagine allowing this kind of article -- from any journalist.
From the article:
"But I got the sense he invited me to the company's offices Tuesday because he was itching to tell someone—to tell the world—that although Odysseus had toppled over after touching down, the mission was, in his words, an absolute success. After more than an hour of speaking with Altemus, I believe him."
There you go, he knew he was being used "to tell the world... the mission was an absolute success" and just went along with it. At that point, he admitted that he was a spokesperson for the company, not an objective journalist. Maybe he could have asked them some tough questions, like why they stated that the lander "was in excellent health" when in the article he now states "Altemus said the mission experienced 11 crises."
Let's not be naive, they picked him because they knew he would write a positive story.
He did ask:
https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1762658970441810250
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Not sure what is going on in this thread, but I am looking forward to the next press conference based on the Ars Technica article. It appears they have now filled in the blanks as to the issues with why the landing went awry.
It seems they were lucky to even get this tippy over landing vs aborting the mission due to the different sensor failures. They seem to have worked around the radio issues to get important data (and more photos?) back.
I hope they clearly explain what changes they will make to IM-2 to ensure they don't have a repeat of these issues, or new issues.
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Two things.
If you come on here with an opinion and people inform you you're wrong, don't get into a fret of posting that you're upset people aren't agreeing with you and then wanting your posts removed. It doesn't work like that.
If you are a long time member on here. Try not to come across like a troll by going after that person. It's embarrassing. And you won't get any forgiveness from me as you're directly saying "I don't care" to the forum rules here.
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There you go, he knew he was being used "to tell the world... the mission was an absolute success" and just went along with it. At that point, he admitted that he was a spokesperson for the company, not an objective journalist. Maybe he could have asked them some tough questions, like why they stated that the lander "was in excellent health" when in the article he now states "Altemus said the mission experienced 11 crises."
Let's not be naive, they picked him because they knew he would write a positive story.
I'm not sure the story was positive. In order to overcome 11 crises, you need to *have* 11 crises - and what caused that? Many seemed self-induced. Forgot to turn the laser on? Star tracker didn't work on initial settings, but no sun sensors or backup settings, turning an in-flight update into a mission-threatening emergency? Link margin not good enough for navigation? How can this be a surprise? - there is no indication anything was wrong with the hardware - didn't they even do the calculations? Plus no antennas facing one hemisphere?
Overcoming 1 crisis in real time makes you a steely-eyed missile man. Overcoming 11 crises makes you a careless hip-shooting space cowboy. I don't know about you, but if a commercial airline bragged about how their pilots overcame 11 in-flight emergencies before crashing the plane (even though no one was killed), there is no way I'm flying on their airline. I want one that doesn't have 11 in-flight emergencies in the first place.
From my childhood I remember a baseball radio announcer getting excited because the home team had set a record for most double-plays in a game. Even as a kid I could recognize "you shouldn't get excited about being in a position where you would need to turn that many double-plays."
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16 hours past the 10-20 hours left announcement, Bochum Observatory still sees the IM-1 signal.
Livestream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEARI6VR_r0
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Anyone that has messed with lunar landing simulations can tell you that ending up crashed at high speed or upside down is incredibly easy even if you have a squat lander. Lunar landing is incredibly unforgiving.
There is no atmosphere entry.
There is not heatshield which hopefully will work and detach properly.
There is no backshell which will hopefully detach safely.
There is no drogue parachute.
There is no main parachue.
There is no unpredictable atmosphere density.
There is no unpredictable wind.
There are no "6 minutes of terror".
You have just to pre-calculate before launch the fuel budget to arrive at 100 m altitude safely and stop there, hovering.
Then it comes the hard part, because there are no Moon models detailed down to single rock level or single crater level, hence you cannot pre-program anything, you must compute in realtime.
We need just to develop a technology for safely autonomously traveling through these last 100m and landing horizontally and stable.
It can't be that difficult.
Instead,we still have to. cope with Schiaparelli Curse:
"Unfortunately, as it neared the lunar surface, the lander believed it was about 100 meters higher relative to the Moon than it actually was. So instead of touching down with a vertical velocity of just 1 meter per second and no lateral movement, Odysseus was coming down three times faster and with a lateral speed of 2 meters per second."
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The simple fact - and it is an absolute fact - is that a lander with height greater than its leg span is less stable than one which has a wider leg span for that same height. The wider, the better, of course (within sensible limits).
Irrelevant. The form factor, instrument requirements, landing location, propulsion system, weight, costs, did not allow for wider design.
There are only 2 possibilities:
- You personally worked in this project
- You are assuming
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There are only 2 possibilities:
- You personally worked in this project
- You are assuming
I can certainly imagine other possibilities that could give someone knowledge of the facts of the matter.
People actually talk to each other, sometimes. Even in the aerospace industry.
And organizations sometimes interact with each other.
I can tell you that it's well known on the forum that Jim is a knowledgeable expert that works in the industry.
That's why it's the newer people going after him assuming he has no basis for his often strident words.
Fair warning that he usually does.
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For those assuming "it is tall, so it must be tippy!": what mass model are you using to calculate CoM?
NOVA-C has it's engine down low between the legs, and the LOX tank a squat ovoid directly above the engine (being unusually massive compared to normal composite tanks, due to being a very high pressure tank). The 'tall' sides are thin carbon fibre honeycomb sandwich panels.
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There are only 2 possibilities:
- You personally worked in this project
- You are assuming
People actually talk to each other, sometimes. Even in the aerospace industry.
This brings up a point I'm curious about. When I worked in the semiconductor industry, especially at conferences, people would speak informally to folks working at competing companies. This was an extremely useful side channel, especially for finding out things that people had tried that did not work, or had unexpected problems (this kind of information is rarely published, nor is it the subject of conference talks). I think it contributed significantly to the fast pace of the industry.
So do designers of landers such as IM-1 talk, even informally, with the designers of India's and China's landers? I'm sure a dinner with a bunch of these folks would have some fascinating conversations.
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There you go, he knew he was being used "to tell the world... the mission was an absolute success" and just went along with it. At that point, he admitted that he was a spokesperson for the company, not an objective journalist. Maybe he could have asked them some tough questions, like why they stated that the lander "was in excellent health" when in the article he now states "Altemus said the mission experienced 11 crises."
Let's not be naive, they picked him because they knew he would write a positive story.
I'm not sure the story was positive. In order to overcome 11 crises, you need to *have* 11 crises - and what caused that? Many seemed self-induced. Forgot to turn the laser on? Star tracker didn't work on initial settings, but no sun sensors or backup settings, turning an in-flight update into a mission-threatening emergency? Link margin not good enough for navigation? How can this be a surprise? - there is no indication anything was wrong with the hardware - didn't they even do the calculations? Plus no antennas facing one hemisphere?
Overcoming 1 crisis in real time makes you a steely-eyed missile man. Overcoming 11 crises makes you a careless hip-shooting space cowboy. I don't know about you, but if a commercial airline bragged about how their pilots overcame 11 in-flight emergencies before crashing the plane (even though no one was killed), there is no way I'm flying on their airline. I want one that doesn't have 11 in-flight emergencies in the first place.
From my childhood I remember a baseball radio announcer getting excited because the home team had set a record for most double-plays in a game. Even as a kid I could recognize "you shouldn't get excited about being in a position where you would need to turn that many double-plays."
So spend about 5-10 times as much money, then?
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There are only 2 possibilities:
- You personally worked in this project
- You are assuming
People actually talk to each other, sometimes. Even in the aerospace industry.
This brings up a point I'm curious about. When I worked in the semiconductor industry, especially at conferences, people would speak informally to folks working at competing companies. This was an extremely useful side channel, especially for finding out things that people had tried that did not work, or had unexpected problems (this kind of information is rarely published, nor is it the subject of conference talks). I think it contributed significantly to the fast pace of the industry.
So do designers of landers such as IM-1 talk, even informally, with the designers of India's and China's landers? I'm sure a dinner with a bunch of these folks would have some fascinating conversations.
Everybody does that, not only in aerospace or semiconductors. At least that I have knowledge about. Another thing is that it may not spark actual cooperation or meaningful action, but from a certain responsibility level onwards (or for those who have certain work standards) it's unavoidable to go beyond a "classic" -and usually very incomplete- literature review. Within the limits of a certain healthy IPR policy and strictly off the record, it's SOP. I can confirm first-hand this is the case in the major European aerospace companies too, especially at the technical levels.
Unfortunately IMHO, a less "research/academic"-centric approach, which was the dominant attitude in space exploration and science until recently, and an ever-growing more commercialized zeitgeist nowadays, fosters mistrust and less information flow in this sense, or simply flow of biased information that is less useful for the overall advancement of the field (though it may be more advantageous to a single party, at least in the short term). Which ties in a bit with the discussion of the last few pages here about the ethics and practical convenience of transparency and overly positive messages that can bring short-term privatized incentives.
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The simple fact - and it is an absolute fact - is that a lander with height greater than its leg span is less stable than one which has a wider leg span for that same height. The wider, the better, of course (within sensible limits).
Irrelevant. The form factor, instrument requirements, landing location, propulsion system, weight, costs, did not allow for wider design.
There are only 2 possibilities:
- You personally worked in this project
- You are assuming
No and no
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Ultimately, this seems like the simplest of project management outcomes:
Only two of the three are achievable:
1. You can build it fast. Check.
2. You can build it cheap. Check.
3. You can build it right. Nope.
NASA said they wanted fast and cheap, they got exactly that.
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https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1762846725595611235?t=yLuKStLfmn-GBb-XUaqhHQ&s=19
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https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1762846725595611235?t=yLuKStLfmn-GBb-XUaqhHQ&s=19
It's darkly amusing that so many in this thread seem determined to complain about how much of a failure IM-1 was when the lander is still alive on the surface of the Moon transmitting mission data.
Ah, that's the word: Pythonesque
Pythonesque (https://youtu.be/Jdf5EXo6I68).
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https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1762866946465313219
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson says at a briefing that the agency is getting data from all six NASA instruments on the IM-1 lunar lander. (One of them is a passive laser retroreflector, so I'm assuming that means they've been able to ping it.)
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https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1762866946465313219
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson says at a briefing that the agency is getting data from all six NASA instruments on the IM-1 lunar lander. (One of them is a passive laser retroreflector, so I'm assuming that means they've been able to ping it.)
Per Eric Berger's article, the plume/lunar dust experiment wasn't sending any data yesterday. It would be good news if it was able to transfer data now.
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Posting the full text of the above tweet (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=59696.msg2572296#msg2572296), titled "Lunar Surface Day Six Update" on their website:
Odysseus continues to generate solar power on the Moon, allowing flight controllers to continue gathering data from the south pole region in furtherance of the IM-1 Mission objectives.
Flight controllers are analyzing new solar charging data and using the additional time to maximize tasks that further future exploration.
Intuitive Machines will participate in a news conference with NASA at the Johnson Space Center in Houston on February 28, 2024, at 2:00 pm ET to discuss the Company’s historic lunar mission.
https://intuitivemachines.com/im-1
(28FEB2024 0825 CST)
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https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1762866946465313219
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson says at a briefing that the agency is getting data from all six NASA instruments on the IM-1 lunar lander. (One of them is a passive laser retroreflector, so I'm assuming that means they've been able to ping it.)
Per Eric Berger's article, the plume/lunar dust experiment wasn't sending any data yesterday. It would be good news if it was able to transfer data now.
I read somewhere that SCALPSS camera didn't work at all, no data to transmit. :(
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Tim Crain showing some appreciation for the amateur tracking of IM-1 at Bochum Observatory that's been posted several times upthread.
Thanks y’all! It’s been great watching you confirm (and add to) our analyst through the mission! #adlunam
https://twitter.com/CrainTim/status/1762846424331436231
And a bit of color from him on the latest update.
Odie. Never. Say. Die.
https://twitter.com/CrainTim/status/1762872197327032506
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So...still no new pictures from our favorite topsy-tervy lunar lander?
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Well. If nothing else, now we can't say that the Sci-Fi trope of crashlanding on an alien planet instead of lithobraking is complete bunk.
It's darkly amusing that so many in this thread seem determined to complain about how much of a failure IM-1 was when the lander is still alive on the surface of the Moon transmitting mission data.
Ah, that's the word: Pythonesque
Pythonesque (https://youtu.be/Jdf5EXo6I68).
I'd say they should rename IM-1 to Mark Watney but Odysseus was an OG survivor.
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So...still no new pictures from our favorite topsy-tervy lunar lander?
Imagery is coming in an hour and a half (2PM Eastern) at a NASA press conference. Supposedly it is really good. From the Berger article:
The company has an incredible photo of this moment showing the lander upright, with the snapped leg and the engine still firing. Altemus plans to publicly release this photo Wednesday.
Edit: Also, our favorite? Don't tell SLIM... (Or is this like asking a parent about their favorite kid?)
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So...still no new pictures from our favorite topsy-tervy lunar lander?
Update press conference live in 60 minutes (19:00 GMT):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xa2n2-_hLPM
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Technical details of EagleCam
2022 (free):
Structural Design and Impact Analysis of a 1.5U CubeSat on the Lunar Surface (https://www.univelt.com/linkedfiles/v176%20Contents.pdf)
Christopher W. Hays, Daniel Posada, Aryslan Malik, Dalton Korczyk, Ben Dafoe, Troy Henderson
DYNAMIC ANALYSIS OF CUBESAT IMPACT ON LUNAR SURFACE (https://commons.erau.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1668&context=edt)
Dalton C. Korczyk
2023 (behind paywall):
EagleCam: a 1.5U Low-Cost CubeSat Mission for a Novel Third-Person View of a Lunar Landing (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10115622)
"The plans call for it to be ejected from the lander about 30 meters above the Moon, and take 5 seconds to drop onto the Aitkin basin, a crater near the Moon's south pole. Its mission is to capture images of the final 20 seconds of Odysseus's descent and touchdown.
The project is dependent upon a solar-powered battery that's expected to last 30 minutes."
https://eu.news-journalonline.com/story/news/education/campus/2024/02/22/1st-u-s-moon-landing-in-50-years-will-inclu-today-intuitive-machines-odysseus-has-erau-camera-aboard/72699182007/
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Redwire’s SpectraCAM (Nova-C’s Terrain Relative Navigation and Hazard Detection and Avoidance cameras):
https://redwirespace.com/newsroom/redwire-cameras-onboard-im-1-mission-to-deliver-science-to-the-lunar-surface/
https://redwirespace.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/redwire-spectracam-flysheet.pdf
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A lander for the south pole cannot be low and squat. It must be tall enough to support vertical solar panels, since the Sun is on the horizon. Earth is also on the horizon, so you your antenna needs to be fairly high above the ground to see Earth and to avoid multipath problems.
This is not clear to me at all. Lunar orbiters have been mapping for years, and doubtless have detailed maps of which places are in sunlight when. Then it's the of the site selection crew to pick a spot that's OK, and the role of optical nav to put the spacecraft there. And popping up an antenna seems far safer than risking overturn.
Also, fitting in the fairing seems a non-issue. According to NASA (https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=IM-1-NOVA), the lander body is a 1.57 meter diameter hexagon. If you cut it into thirds, and tacked the three segments together honeycomb style, it could easily fit in the fairing at only a fraction of the current height. It would end up looking similar to the Viking landers.
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https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1762866946465313219
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson says at a briefing that the agency is getting data from all six NASA instruments on the IM-1 lunar lander. (One of them is a passive laser retroreflector, so I'm assuming that means they've been able to ping it.)
Per Eric Berger's article, the plume/lunar dust experiment wasn't sending any data yesterday. It would be good news if it was able to transfer data now.
I read somewhere that SCALPSS camera didn't work at all, no data to transmit. :(
It was Eric Berger's article but it was an assumption. Anyways, we will find out more in a few minutes.
Only the Stereo Cameras for the Lunar Plume-Surface Studies experiment, intended to capture the effects of the lander’s engine plume as it interacted with the lunar surface, are not responding. Altemus said he believes this payload was damaged during the landing process. Most of the commercial payloads are working as intended.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/it-turns-out-that-odysseus-landed-on-the-moon-without-any-altimetry-data/
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The press conference is live.
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the spin cycle has commenced. If they used all the fuel/oxidizer/helium--as just claimed--how did they land as planned under power and not in free fall?
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FINALLY!
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Photo #2
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Is a 7 miles per hour that causes the removal of landing gear "gentle?"
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They also posted these and one more photo on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1762919213155381756
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My heart goes out to all the people who have worked their heart out to salvage the mission and get as much data as possible. Most of them didn't choose this situation, yet they've done their best with what they have and that will greatly benefit lunar exploration in the long run.
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https://twitter.com/int_machines/status/1762919220528951489
Taken on February 27th, flight controllers commanded Odysseus to capture a new image using its narrow-field-of-view camera. Previous attempts to send photos from landing and the days following returned unusable imagery. After successfully transmitting the image to Earth, flight controllers received additional insight into Odysseus' position on the lunar surface.
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A lander for the south pole cannot be low and squat. It must be tall enough to support vertical solar panels, since the Sun is on the horizon. Earth is also on the horizon, so you your antenna needs to be fairly high above the ground to see Earth and to avoid multipath problems.
This is not clear to me at all. Lunar orbiters have been mapping for years, and doubtless have detailed maps of which places are in sunlight when. Then it's the of the site selection crew to pick a spot that's OK, and the role of optical nav to put the spacecraft there. And popping up an antenna seems far safer than risking overturn.
Also, fitting in the fairing seems a non-issue. According to NASA (https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=IM-1-NOVA), the lander body is a 1.57 meter diameter hexagon. If you cut it into thirds, and tacked the three segments together honeycomb style, it could easily fit in the fairing at only a fraction of the current height. It would end up looking similar to the Viking landers.
The problem is not just the volume, but also the mass. And a design like that would definitely require significantly more mass.
Morpheus (which of course did a lot to inform the design of Nova-C) did something like this, but instead of chopping the tankage into thirds, it split the propellant up into four tanks, to create a more uniform mass distribution. But it came with certain costs, too.
It is hard to say more without more details of how Intuitive Machines analyzed these tradeoffs, and what their data showed.
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the spin cycle has commenced.
It is pretty amazing spin. They had 11 failures, but they said "nothing broke." They said that the objectives were to land "softly and safety" and they were successful at doing that--even while releasing a photo showing the landing gear breaking.
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Summary video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrW7V-1X4Po
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That is uninformed opinion.
But one based on the simple laws of Physics, so one can only conclude that anyone disputing it is disputing those laws of Physics.
Intuitive themselves have confirmed that the high centre of mass was ultimately due to the weight distribution necessary for the lander and the available space in the launch container.
A perfectly controlled vertical landing wouldn't have mattered. One with a sideways vector would - and did.
And this also raises the question over understanding what 'uninformed' means.
Perhaps it is similar to the word 'tippier' only being in the American dictionary?
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https://twitter.com/jeff_foust/status/1762866946465313219
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson says at a briefing that the agency is getting data from all six NASA instruments on the IM-1 lunar lander. (One of them is a passive laser retroreflector, so I'm assuming that means they've been able to ping it.)
Per Eric Berger's article, the plume/lunar dust experiment wasn't sending any data yesterday. It would be good news if it was able to transfer data now.
I read somewhere that SCALPSS camera didn't work at all, no data to transmit. :(
It was Eric Berger's article but it was an assumption. Anyways, we will find out more in a few minutes.
Only the Stereo Cameras for the Lunar Plume-Surface Studies experiment, intended to capture the effects of the lander’s engine plume as it interacted with the lunar surface, are not responding. Altemus said he believes this payload was damaged during the landing process. Most of the commercial payloads are working as intended.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/it-turns-out-that-odysseus-landed-on-the-moon-without-any-altimetry-data/
It was clarified during the press conference that the data has just started to come in with that instrument but it was recent data, not data from the landing itself.
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Overcoming 1 crisis in real time makes you a steely-eyed missile man. Overcoming 11 crises makes you a careless hip-shooting space cowboy. I don't know about you, but if a commercial airline bragged about how their pilots overcame 11 in-flight emergencies before crashing the plane (even though no one was killed), there is no way I'm flying on their airline. I want one that doesn't have 11 in-flight emergencies in the first place.
Good look finding an airline which developed and build its first airplane and has less than 11 in-flight emergencies on their first flight.
For me a great mission with a good enough outcome. Some of the critized design decisions are simply better for long term regular operations. No Saturn 5 stages diameter, no complex leg mechanisms, etc,...
I also find it funny, that some of the radio amateuers received signals with 86db noise and 84db signal. Okay, that is still double as much signal ratio than this thread but still very nice.
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From the press conference, it seems that all of the issues that they encountered during IM-1 shouldn't be issues for IM-2. The good news is that Intuitive Machines gets 3 tries at this, so they will get it right.
Astrobotics' Peregrine lander isn't as lucky as it doesn't currently have a second mission (their other CLPS mission is a different lander).
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From the Presser.
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I'm happy that they are (apparently) being very transparent with the facts of the mission. I don't mind if they're overly positive about the outcome of the mission and have their own take on the success that (gasp) doesn't align with the views of all forum-goers here. We are all able to make our own judgments about the success or lack of success of the mission, and I won't begrudge anyone their opinion on that front, but some of the criticisms here IMO cross the line and are just plain mean-spirited.
Congratulations to IM-1 on a successful mission; I hope for IM-2 the success is less qualified and the failures of this mission are successfully corrected. Also - get some sleep! :). You've earned it.
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https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1762939648760742157
Revised understanding is that Ody is tilted only about 30 degrees rather than completely on its side.
https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1762940618332852522
The Leaning Tower of Malapert A...
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Congratulations to IM-1 on a successful mission; I hope for IM-2 the success is less qualified and the failures of this mission are successfully corrected. Also - get some sleep! :). You've earned it.
Hey Mods - Where is the IM-2 thread???
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From the Presser.
It is not immediately noticeable, but the big dark patch visible in picture is a big crater (said in the conference).
But which one in LRO picture?
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if I understood correctly, the white patch is the mark of the "bounce" : arriving too fast, the lander almost crashed, breaking its leg, but the main engine shortly fired too slow lander down, causing the "bounce".
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Is a 7 miles per hour that causes the removal of landing gear "gentle?"
Apparently it was a "brilliant", "highly successful", "soft landing".
- Ed Kyle
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the spin cycle has commenced. If they used all the fuel/oxidizer/helium--as just claimed--how did they land as planned under power and not in free fall?
Sounds like they hit the ground and the thrust after the engine bell contacted the ground wasn't enough to make the lander rise back up too much if at all.
There was positive spin in this press conference, but that wasn't it.
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Some rough presser notes:
Expected total mission time
- 144 hours (end this evening)
- will put to sleep and try to wake upon next lunar day
Used all helium, all methane, all oxygen.
Firsts according to Tim Crain:
- first time a cryogenic payload has been fueled on the pad
- first time a flight of an overwrapped linerless cryogenic tank has succeeded
- first time a methalox engine has been fired in deep space, fired repeatedly in deep space
- set the record for length of an engine firing with LOI, then broke it the next day with powered descent
Still 'firsts' from Crain? Unclear.
- thermodynamic venting systems for cryogenic cooling
- inline processing of optical imagery, which enabled safe landing
- got multipath data from lunar south pole using multiple radios
Four things they couldn't test before launch
- fully loaded methalox vehicle through launch loads and vibration
- free flight control of engine must be tested in space
- comms network communicating at lunar distance
- camera performance at the moon
Future
- more cameras
- commercial mission called IM-C1
- larger lander, Nova D
- comm sats around the moon [Note, these currently planned to fly on IM-2 and IM-3]
350MB of sci/eng data brought down as of now
NASA payloads
- LN-1 - four passes of comms with DSN
- ROALSES
- four antennas to deploy on surface
- more heat than expected
- lost one antenna in transit
- at that point, decided to collect data in transit, so got bonus data
- also deployed on surface, got data as expected
- ROALSES team has detected freq of radio noise from Earth; Earth much quieter than expected, but loud at high freq
- "have all the ROALSES data down"
- SCALPSS
- planned to observe plumes during landing
- had hardware problems that did not allow operation during descent
- two days ago, IM team worked with SCALPSS team to change operations mode
- SCALPSS now working
- NDL
- all NDL data has been received
- team reports NDL worked "far better than they expected"
- RFMG
- collected data while tanking on the surface
- also during coast, during descent, and while in lunar orbit
- first time RFMG has been integrated into prop system
- LRA
- retroreflector
- do believe LRO can range to LRA, will work on that in the coming months
- now have a location marker on the moon at 80 deg south
- "Instead of ending up with a few bytes of data, which was the baseline goal for us, we've gotten over 50 MB of data, which, we went basically from a cocktail straw of data coming back, to a boba tea sized straw of data coming back."
- Says team went from overcoming challenges to "incredible successes for all of our payloads."
The 11 crises
- the warm methane on the first attempt
- the star tracker issue
- too tight of a tolerance check
- prevented vehicle from getting power positive
- in commissioning maneuver, discovered a drift in the yaw channel of the main engine control
- drifted to one side in the CM, saw again in TCM1
- had to come up with scenarios where the engine geometry would explain that drift
- knew they could do the small burns, but amount of drift would be too much for powered descent
- moved the CG estimate around the vehicle around
- suspected original CG wasn't incorrect, but moving it mimicked the problem signature
- did patch to redefine the engine geometry
- under full thrust load, geometry of actuators was slightly different
- patching it allowed for successful LOI and descent
- once engine pointing was tuned up, during powered descent, it "looked like a video game" - had never seen it perform that well.
- engine chill
- the CM burn, chill wasn't right on oxygen side, had to go again, so didn't fire on time.
- TCM1 burn, chill wrong on methane side, had to reload, fired a couple hours later.
- after TCM1, had engine chill handled, next five burns were exactly on time of ignition.
- if had missed LOI by a minute, wouldn't land on the moon.
- lower orbit after LOI
- perilune was low
- flight dynamics had preloaded ability to do a lunar correction maneuver
- moved orbit from 100km circular to something close to descent orbit
- control room moved deorbit insertion from orbit 12 to orbit 3
- laser rangefinders
- there's a pin in the cable that you have to insert to activate laser, can't see the pin once inserted
- clearly fixable
- vehicle performed, just with optical nav, well enough to land safely
- most of the crises that were cited were identified and resolved before they impacted the mission
Landing hard
- it's sounding like coming down hard was a consequence of doing purely optical nav + no good altimeter data + actual landing site having a higher elevation than the notional landing site elevation that was programmed in (I suppose as a last resort).
- came down with the engine firing, because the Automated Flight Manager hadn't yet switched to the mode where it sensed when to shut the engine off.
- saw a spike in the combustion chamber, know the engine bell contacted the surface.
- landing gear took brunt of the load, broke one or possibly two landing gear.
- sat there upright with the engine firing for a period of time.
- as it wound down, the lander gently tipped over. simulation suggests it took about two seconds to fall.
- landed on a 12 degree slope.
- that 12 degree slope compounded with helium tank or radio shelf results in an angle that's approx 30 degrees off the surface.
- photo confirms the orientation
- roll orientation shows that the planned roll to point towards Earth worked
- top deck solar array shadowed also suggests roll was correct
- landed about 500m from a 500m diam crater, can see it in the 'lean' photo, use it to see how they're oriented.
Antennas
- lander pointed in the right direction via roll maneuver, but fell all the way backwards save 30 degrees after leg break.
- 'and so our antennas are in an off-nominal configuration.'
- had to really work with lunar telemetry partners, also DSN.
- absolutely the signals are bouncing off the moon - receiving direct path, plus the opposite polarization from the reflected signal
- had to sort through how to handle that
- afterwards could monitor health, send basic commands for 16 hours a day
- over Australia, could pull down data (from the Parkes 64m dish) for 8 hours at a time
- at that time, 'no dead air'
- You want to fix SCALPSS? Great. Be downloading data while you work with SCALPSS.
Success
- NASA's goal for CLPS was for there to be a soft landing that could gather data. That was done.
- Science payload goals - still assessing; e.g. SCALPSS didn't gather landing data.
- SCALPSS and ROALSES will fly on future CLPS deliveries also
Lunar night / end of power for the lunar day
- will prep lander for lunar night instead of draining entire battery
- expect 5 hours left before no commanding / no telemetry
- will leave computers and power system in a place where they can try to wake it up after lunar night
- main limiter is batteries - that chemistry does not respond well to deep cold
- 14 days of deep cold
- battery not tested to that level of cold, neither was the flight computer or the radios
- "If we asked our vendors to tell us what the probability was of surviving the deep cold of the moon, they would not put it in writing, and well they shouldn't."
- solar arrays should handle it fine
- confident arrays will send power, but will batteries receive it and will the electronics be there to use it
Sharing learning
- "want to give insights of our learning and experience"
- expects conference papers, talks, briefings about what they've learned, to raise all boats
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.
Payload success
- every payload has met some level of their objectives
- both navigation demonstrators have graduated to actually having been used for navigation - LN-1 during transit, NDL on descent.
- just a few hours before press conference, got confirmation all payload data has been downloaded
- will turn sensors back on if lander wakes up for day 2
Laser rangefinder cable
- it's a range saftey requirement to not have an active laser while getting ready to launch
- the disable was by removing a pin that then needed to be inserted into a cable
- a problem with not testing how they fly
- the engineering units for the rangefinder didn't have the limiter
- the cable for the testing the flight unit didn't have the missing pin
- it sounds like maybe by 'pin' they mean a literal conductor pin in the connector interface
- which would explain how once the connector is connected, you can't see the missing pin anymore
SCALPSS issue
- a hardware failure in the serial port kept them from collecting data during descent
- fixed that after landing
- even if that hadn't happened, due to the flight computer not expecting landing at the altitude it happened, SCALPSS wouldn't have been triggered ("...is my understanding")
- however, minimum success criteria were met - e.g. surviving launch, doing transit checkouts (did checkouts on surface.)
- sounds like due to serial port problem, hadn't done transit checkouts actually in transit (or discovered they hadn't)
- firefly mission has their own version of SCALPSS, will be able to use this data to improve that try.
- other imagery that was taken during landing IM is happy to share with the SCALPSS folks, have seem some of those, does have plumes.
More on the crises
- not all had the same 'time constant' to fight against.
- star tracker problem had a very stark immediacy to it. Only 'a matter of hours' available to solve it before power runs out.
- Engine start sequence fix (chilldown) had opportunities built into the mission to fix over the coming burns before LOI.
- Same for fine tuning the engine geometry.
- If any of them had been left unresolved, they'd become major.
- But not all of them had such a high pressure time component.
- "With that said, this is a sprint mission to the moon"
- fastest transfer since Apollo.
- so the pressure of only having so many days before you have to be in lunar orbit was definitely felt
- and so didn't necessarily breathe easier on the ones that had more time; they were critical
ESA
- was very excited for their mission
- talking to a number of European companies flying on "our mission 2" (IM-2? May or may not be PRIME-1?)
- ESA has expressed interest in flying payloads on that mission
Other payloads
- heard from several companies entertaining sponsorships
More on the rangefinders
- if they'd had them, they would have "nailed the landing"
- lander has a terrain map for anticipating terrain elevation, is robust to variations in that terrain, have tested for that
- "confident that if the rangefinders had been intergrated into the system, we would have absolutely hit the bullseye."
NDL hack
- succeeded in getting the sensors into the registers the landfinders were going to use
- succeeded in remapping the new sensor geometry for use
- however, there was a 'data valid flag' that the original rangefinder hardware had that they had to overwrite to always be valid
- they didn't overwrite it and so no NDL data was marked as valid for use
- thus they landed with IMU and optical nav only
Major redesigns
- the rangefinder fix is not that
- but does talk about adding cameras and adding antennas
Innovation from IM
- e.g. their engine injector
- during development, printed and tested an injector every 10 days
- printed in 5 days, post processed in machine shop, fire it, characterize it
- built 40 injectors, worked perfectly in flight
EagleCam
- successfully ejected post landing
- camera or wifi not working properly at the moment, Embry Riddle currently working on it
- would love to fly it again on a future mission
Timelines
- Didn't start getting telemetry packets from the vehicle until about Day 3 on the surface.
- That was when they noticed they hadn't processed the NDL data.
Still getting back newly generated payload data as lander continues to survive
- I assume 'all payload data received' above means anything that was generated and stored
Antennas
- since they've been on the surface, all comms has been with the low gain antennas
Power
- in minimum power mode for computer, radios, power distribution units, and heaters, the lander runs about 125W.
- orientation means the lander dies early, but top deck is pointed toward the east, so should start getting power at sunrise
Temperature
- as the sun gets lower, things are starting to cool
- that's giving them information on radio and multipath on the moon in different temperature profiles
- columbia insolation did so well, they plan on using additional columbia materials on IM-2
- relationship is now more than a sponsorship, will expand the partnership
NASA payload data
- after about six months, will end up in PDS
More on radios
- before they figured out how to config the radios, they were getting "drops of data."
- then went to, with Parkes in Australia, a "steady trickle of data."
- when they have access to a high gain antenna (and IM-2 has a better one than IM-1), "that will be a flood."
- orders of magnitude more data through high gain.
- plan to eventually have a real time bent pipe link via lunar orbiting assets. At that point can do live video of landing.
- lunar orbiting assets can also help with safety for Artemis and sharing more day to day info about surface operations.
Landing site names
- Will have a competition (within IM, they probably mean); Tim Crain threw out Penelope, the wife Odysseus went through his travails to return to.
ESA Lunar Pathfinder
- comms relay demonstration on a future CLPS mission in partnership with ESA
- will be dropped off in orbit before landing
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Revised understanding is that Ody is tilted only about 30 degrees rather than completely on its side.
30 degrees from horizon horizontal, not 30 degrees from vertical, is my understanding.
- Ed Kyle
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Revised understanding is that Ody is tilted only about 30 degrees rather than completely on its side.
30 degrees from horizon horizontal, not 30 degrees from vertical, is my understanding.
- Ed Kyle
https://twitter.com/planet4589/status/1762952551572382185
Clarification: 30 deg above the local horizontal, about 18 deg (if I heard correctly) above local surface which is itself a slope.
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Some rough presser notes:
Amazing work; thank you!
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Full resolution versions of the released photos.
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This is probably written somewhere on this forum but I was wondering how this lander is keeping the propellant cold? Or is it not that cold and at super high pressure? Is there some information on how they're managing prop temp and pressure?
Presume they're tolerating boil-off having loaded excess LCH4 for the purpose.
So this was wrong.
Tim Crain pretty clearly said Nova-C landers tolerate high pressures in the propellant tanks.
I was wrong yet again. In the Feb 28 telecon Crain referred to thermodynamic venting systems providing cryogenic cooling.
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So many are calling it spin and whatnot but seriously...What is everyone's problem?
IM can either be positive about it or negative. They have been fully transparent IMO and correcting what they said/think as the data keeps coming in. I don't really understand what more you all want from them here? Perfect or nothing seems to be the only two things people will accept. :(
I for one will always take positivity in the face of problems/issues....always.
Now to see if it can pull a SLIM and wake back up after lunar night. I know it's not suppose to...but onward positive thinking!
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So many are calling it spin and whatnot but seriously...What is everyone's problem?
I've pretty much written off the constant sniping in this thread as an exaggerated "Hrmph!"
If this was a sports statistics column, you'd put an asterisk by the "successful landing, mission objectives (mostly) accomplished" and move on.
Congratulate the team for resilience (and perseverance) above and beyond the call of duty.
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Thank you theinternetffw!
I assumed no one dared a blow-by-blow during the presser due to the noise level of this topic.
- just a few hours before press conference, got confirmation all payload data has been downloaded
That sounds pretty successful to me.
Congratulations IM!
& the tippy wider leg argument (oh i hope i'm not going to multiply the pain) seems moot.
Stronger legs, perhaps vs. they broke and absorbed the energy, but better a working altimeter ;)
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They almost fell in. Terrain maps a necessity, not a luxury.
https://twitter.com/this_is_tckb/status/1762918459376038158
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I notice some lack of perspective in this thread. This landing was a WILD SUCCESS! Yes, it was a "soft" landing. Not "soft" would have been a smoking crater on the ground with immediate and terminal end-of-signal. Do you know how hard this is to do? How easy to screw up a little thing and fail completely, like so many other landers or spacecraft have done, with much larger budgets? Some people here are nuts.
I'll be the first to make fun of their hyperbole vs. screw ups, but it was a success. And now they'll fix their problems and will keep putting landers on the moon.
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https://twitter.com/amsatdl/status/1762980249485078833
It looks like we might have seen the last transmission for this Lunar cycle. There is no detectable signal for longer than the deep fading period now..
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https://twitter.com/stim3on/status/1762966276027117615
I made a panoramic projection of this image, maybe this helps with interpretation.
https://www.360cities.net/image/im-1-landing-wfov-fisheye?override_cache=true
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They almost fell in. Terrain maps a necessity, not a luxury.
https://twitter.com/this_is_tckb/status/1762918459376038158
Apollo 15 was on a slope of about 11 degrees.
- Ed Kyle
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Revised understanding is that Ody is tilted only about 30 degrees rather than completely on its side.
Why did they need to revise the understanding? Why couldn't they just look at accelerometers to get easy to interpret information on which way is up?
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In the presser they said the landing elipse was 1.5km.
Do we know, what the intuitive machines own lidar looks like? The one which couldn't be switched on?
Looks like it's realy delievering 3d point clouds.
https://ssdl.gatech.edu/sites/default/files/ssdl-files/papers/conferencePapers/AAS%2022-113.pdf
The Nasa Doppler Lidar
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20220004798
doesn't give you a point cloud which would allow for a reconstruction of the local surface (if I'm not totally mistaken). Actually it is really close to what Apollo used on the LM (one more beam for Apollo, Laser vs Radar but both beeing frequency modulated, and of course nowadays you do your rf in software, not in analog hardware).
But if the intuitive machines Lidar is also switched on on orbit, I believe it would also not deliver a picture of the surface. In the presser they talked about "optical navigation sytem" and "data flow" (1:06:45). I wonder if he meant optical flow? Optical flow allows the reconstruction of the surface. They do use optical flow, see paper below. Albeit that algo would be blind with dust clouds or when the ship is hovering close to standstill. Also it has a lot of complex draw backs.
Found it: https://ssdl.gatech.edu/sites/default/files/ssdl-files/papers/conferencePapers/AAS%2022-113.pdf
It is optical flow. And the outlier rejection is some of the worst and computation intensive problems. And I didn't spend much time thinking about it, but optical flow works on detecting, what image parts have moved to which new location. And sometimes the image parts doesn't move. E.g. in a car there is a point on the horizon you are driving towards, which doesn't move. And while landing vertically the parts directly below you also doesn't move. So quite interesting.
Listening the presser again and started reading the papers: The Lidar would scan the terrain and a terain following algo would deliver the current position. The paper also mentions, that the resolution from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter are not sufficient. Still wonder if they could detect the surface based on Lidar only or if optical flow was anyway the way to go.
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Some rough presser notes:
You win hero of the day for the forum typing that all out. :)
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(cut down for what's necessary for this post)
Future
- more cameras
- commercial mission called IM-C1
- larger lander, Nova-D
- comm sats around the moon [Note, these currently planned to fly on IM-2 and IM-3]
Slightly off topic, but noting that the future Nova-D lander, following the Roman numerals trend will have 500kg of payload capacity, similar to Astrobotic's Griffin (~625kg)
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Lots of great info, so basically the initial failed laser range finders, and then the valid flag bug in the rushed patch to use the NASA sensor is the main cause for the tipped over langing.
Looks like they got a lot of learnings to process and likely a number of changes needed in IM-2 such as a way to verify the laser safety pin is in place before launch. Maybe instead of pin they should have a switch with a lockout? Sounds like this was a bit of a last minute jerry-rig to meet a range safety requirement.
The issues with the engine cooling and control I think is somewhat expected first time you send a new design into space without a "test" mission, or spending lots of resources on perfect simulations.
Also they need to think about how to improve the radio/antenna systems to better handle off-nominal landings. The satellite launched with IM-2 will solve some of that, particularly with these pole locations. They also need to look at improvements on the ground side with the dishes they have picked and whether they need upgrades to improve capabilities - e.g. being able to transmit from Parkes, higher power transmitters, etc
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Looks like they got a lot of learnings to process and likely a number of changes needed in IM-2 such as a way to verify the laser safety pin is in place before launch. Maybe instead of pin they should have a switch with a lockout? Sounds like this was a bit of a last minute jerry-rig to meet a range safety requirement.
Green tag is for items that need to installed before flight. Standard practice is an enable plug vs a wire pin. The issue is their implementation. Items like this would be known years before flying as part of safety review process. NASA usually hand holds payloads through this process and most of the payloads know to do things like this. My take on this is a new company going through the process and SpaceX doing the minimum to host/facilitate (their facility, their rocket) the process and they don't know what is flying next month much less next year so their review process is just in time. Things are done much later in the mission cycle and certainly much later in the design and development process (spacecraft in manufacture vs in design reviews).
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Quick note that in my notes above I had that the NASA payloads had sent back "over 15 MB" of data.
I misheard. The correct quote is a much more sensible "over 50 MB."
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Green tag is for items that need to installed before flight. Standard practice is an enable plug vs a wire pin. The issue is their implementation. Items like this would be known years before flying as part of safety review process. NASA usually hand holds payloads through this process and most of the payloads know to do things like this. My take on this is a new company going through the process and SpaceX doing the minimum to host/facilitate (their facility, their rocket) the process and they don't know what is flying next month much less next year so their review process is just in time. Things are done much later in the mission cycle and certainly much later in the design and development process (spacecraft in manufacture vs in design reviews).
Thanks for your insight! An enable plug sounds like a good idea as its easy to verify during inspections.
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https://twitter.com/ILOA_Hawaii/status/1763031928671007128
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https://twitter.com/InfographicTony/status/1763049654642745399
UPDATE 2.0 (unofficial): This is how I have interpreted the landing based on recent photos. Note the rock placements are artistic license and it reads right to left because it's going to be inserted into the main infographic I am updating.
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UPDATE 2.0 (unofficial): This is how I have interpreted the landing based on recent photos. Note the rock placements are artistic license and it reads right to left because it's going to be inserted into the main infographic I am updating.
Still needs work to match the press conference, the ground has some slope and the lander is leaning on one of the side tanks...
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UPDATE 2.0 (unofficial): This is how I have interpreted the landing based on recent photos. Note the rock placements are artistic license and it reads right to left because it's going to be inserted into the main infographic I am updating.
Still needs work to match the press conference, the ground has some slope and the lander is leaning on one of the side tanks...
… and the solar panel “on top” is facing away from the Sun.
Did Odysseus travel into the slope going up or along it going down?
However, this is a great start.
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https://twitter.com/DrPhiltill/status/1762897857311371626
After reading this I will always envision a lander whose vision was blinded but it flies heroically toward the surface, guessing how far to go, impacting too hard and sliding across the ground, flinging rocks and dust while the engine still spews flame, metal bending and a leg snapping free before it skids to a stop, teetering, bruised and covered with dust, but proudly upright on the freaking Moon for a brief moment, and it says, “Hey bruh. I did it.”🔥
Article: https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/it-turns-out-that-odysseus-landed-on-the-moon-without-any-altimetry-data/
I visited Intuitive Machines on Tuesday wondering whether the Odysseus mission was a success or a failure. I left without any doubts.
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I notice some lack of perspective in this thread. This landing was a WILD SUCCESS! Yes, it was a "soft" landing. Not "soft" would have been a smoking crater on the ground with immediate and terminal end-of-signal. Do you know how hard this is to do? How easy to screw up a little thing and fail completely, like so many other landers or spacecraft have done, with much larger budgets? Some people here are nuts.
I'll be the first to make fun of their hyperbole vs. screw ups, but it was a success. And now they'll fix their problems and will keep putting landers on the moon.
Next time you'll get a plane you will understand why this landing was a failure. Anyway, we have a failed landing followed by a successful mission. It was by luck, or by chance, or by God wish, anyway the lander survived to a catastrophic slow-motion landing (only low gravity prevented lander from being destroyed on impact: it took 2 seconds for it to tip over) .
Now, the root cause of the bad landing: no space flight know-how.
Now they know they need quality procedures and pre-launch checklists, they can't do everything by heart and hope everything goes well: you mis-design a pin (hiding it to view), you forgot to check if a fundamental payload is ready for launch, and you burn 200 milion dollars in a second.
Apart from this:
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.
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.
And finally: congratulations to the developer of the algorithm for visual navigation, it saved the mission. Now we know that laser finder are maybe not needed at all, as long there is enough time to process images onboard to also determine altitude, not just speed: my 200$ smartphone can determine object dimensions with cm precision using just one camera, the accelerometer and the gyroscope, just by SW processing (look for "AR measure" on playstore) , and thanks to ARcore library it can build a 3d model of my room in realtime while I move it around.
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The ILOA image from the surface has a surprise hiding in the glare:
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https://twitter.com/InfographicTony/status/1763101422764319130
UPDATE 3.0: Function over aesthetics, in this case, everything was working against me in creating an infographic that reads right to left, I did have an end goal in mind (more for visually appealing reasons), but once admitting defeat, the realization was clear I was trying to reinvent the wheel. Now that I am reworking this left to right, the tangled mess in my brain now sees clarity. Now I just have to work out the other steps that lead to Odysseus’ final resting place.
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The ILOA image from the surface has a surprise hiding in the glare:
Wow I didn't even notice that in the original...
It will be an interesting spot to visit in the future with a rover or moon buggy.
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Have India released any Chandrayaan-2 images of the landing site yet? I think it is supposed to have higher resolution camera then LRO.
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The ILOA image from the surface has a surprise hiding in the glare:
Phill Stooke, I contacted Tony Bela to update his image based on the photo that you posted. Good catch.
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https://twitter.com/amsatdl/status/1763117774249902419
Surprisingly #IM1
@Int_Machines
@CrainTim kept transmitting throughout the night until LOS this morning @SternwarteBO !! 😃The transmitter seemed to turn on every 30 minutes or so. Video is available here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=UfEe35_lv7w
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I notice some lack of perspective in this thread. This landing was a WILD SUCCESS! Yes, it was a "soft" landing. Not "soft" would have been a smoking crater on the ground with immediate and terminal end-of-signal. Do you know how hard this is to do? How easy to screw up a little thing and fail completely, like so many other landers or spacecraft have done, with much larger budgets? Some people here are nuts.
I'll be the first to make fun of their hyperbole vs. screw ups, but it was a success. And now they'll fix their problems and will keep putting landers on the moon.
Next time you'll get a plane you will understand why this landing was a failure. Anyway, we have a failed landing followed by a successful mission. It was by luck, or by chance, or by God wish, anyway the lander survived to a catastrophic slow-motion landing (only low gravity prevented lander from being destroyed on impact: it took 2 seconds for it to tip over) .
Now, the root cause of the bad landing: no space flight know-how.
Now they know they need quality procedures and pre-launch checklists, they can't do everything by heart and hope everything goes well: you mis-design a pin (hiding it to view), you forgot to check if a fundamental payload is ready for launch, and you burn 200 milion dollars in a second.
Apart from this:
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.
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.
And finally: congratulations to the developer of the algorithm for visual navigation, it saved the mission. Now we know that laser finder are maybe not needed at all, as long there is enough time to process images onboard to also determine altitude, not just speed: my 200$ smartphone can determine object dimensions with cm precision using just one camera, the accelerometer and the gyroscope, just by SW processing (look for "AR measure" on playstore) , and thanks to ARcore library it can build a 3d model of my room in realtime while I move it around.
Maybe as a "spacexplorer" you could offer your services to the team? I am sure they would be very grateful for your insights and collegiality.
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One leg left behind, but it also looks like all of them were damaged.
https://twitter.com/DDAVISSPACEART/status/1762951458641842492 (https://twitter.com/DDAVISSPACEART/status/1762951458641842492)
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https://twitter.com/SpacesFuture/status/1763104288015036772
Odysseus Trajectory from Schomberger to Malapert A ^
🧭 Tipping of Odyssey 🛸 On Its Back w/ One Side Solar Panel Up 🔆 Forward Solar🔆 To Schomberger, Aft Engine 🔥 & Legs 🦿 To Malapert A 6️⃣ & the Sun set 🌄⚫ ¹!?
_
¹https://twitter.com/SpacesFuture/status/1763094971077533924
^https://twitter.com/SpacesFuture/status/1760741512785350988
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https://twitter.com/pascalleetweets/status/1763112516165775856
ODYSSEUS FLIES BY CRATER SCHOMBERGER K
LEFT: Landscape around @Int_Machines Odysseus on final descent from Schomberger (left) to Malapert A (right). Dashed box is area in next pic.
RIGHT: Stunning pic from Odysseus'
@ILOA_Hawaii imager w/ Schomberger K at left.
@SETIInstitute
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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!
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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.
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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.
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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)
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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.
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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 (https://www.americaspace.com/2024/02/17/im-1-makes-history-by-igniting-cryogenic-engine-in-deep-space/).
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.
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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.
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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)
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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 (https://www.americaspace.com/2024/02/17/im-1-makes-history-by-igniting-cryogenic-engine-in-deep-space/).
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.
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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 (https://www.americaspace.com/2024/02/17/im-1-makes-history-by-igniting-cryogenic-engine-in-deep-space/).
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.
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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!
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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 (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205873/) 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 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkes_Observatory), the main lobe boresight (https://saving.em.keysight.com/en/calculators/antenna-gain-calculator) (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.)
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It's a minor point, but one I can comment on. Any larger antenna like The Dish (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205873/) 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 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkes_Observatory), the main lobe boresight (https://saving.em.keysight.com/en/calculators/antenna-gain-calculator) (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.
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It's a minor point, but one I can comment on. Any larger antenna like The Dish (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205873/) 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 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkes_Observatory), the main lobe boresight (https://saving.em.keysight.com/en/calculators/antenna-gain-calculator) (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.
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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.
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Any info on when IM will try again with IM-2?
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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.
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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.
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https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1763336637432385813
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https://twitter.com/SpaceByStorm/status/1763337932759609847
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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.
The smaller dishes are not off the shelf, but General Dynamics has built more than 10 of them for DSN (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/general-dynamics-satcom-technologies-completes-installation-and-test-of-nasa-deep-space-network-antennas-300284200.html), and continues to build more. So the knowledge of how to build them is current.
Also the old 70 meters are expensive to maintain. Not only are they old and wearing out, they are of a design where all the transmitters, and cryogenic receivers, are up high at the focus and swing around when the antenna moves. The new antennas reflect the focus into the basement ("beam waveguide") so all the fancy electronics are at ground level and indoors, making maintenance and upgrades much simpler. As JPL says: (https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-breaks-ground-on-new-deep-space-network-antennas)
The new antennas, known as "beam wave guide" antennas, can be used more flexibly, allowing the network to operate on several different frequency bands within the same antenna. Their electronic equipment is more accessible, making maintenance easier and less costly. The new antennas also can receive higher-frequency, wider-bandwidth signals known as the "Ka band." This band, required for new NASA missions approved after 2009, allows the newer antennas to carry more data than the older ones.
For receiving, when you really need the sensitivity you can array 34 meter dishes. But for transmitting, nothing beats a giant honking transmitter (500 kW) on a giant honking dish (70 meter). That's why they are needed for commanding really far away missions (like Voyager), planetary radar, and emergency commanding of spacecraft during anomalies when those craft can only use their low-gain antennas. So I suspect that although NASA would love to retire those old expensive dishes, they will be stuck with them for quite a while.
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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.
[/quote]
OF COURSE I meant: when in your next flight your plane will land so hard that it will crash its landing gear and bend the fuselage making some exits unusable, but you will survive just because it didn't catch fire, you will understand why what happened to im-1 was not "landing successfully and being a great success" but "crash on the moon but luckily survive by unbelievable coincidence and be able to continue the mission".
I'm glad it survived, but given the root causes of the issues , and how the issues were described and managed, I will never purchase a flight with IM for my payloads. But I would accept if they pay me for giving them my payloads for testing.
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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.
The smaller dishes are not off the shelf, but General Dynamics has built more than 10 of them for DSN (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/general-dynamics-satcom-technologies-completes-installation-and-test-of-nasa-deep-space-network-antennas-300284200.html), and continues to build more. So the knowledge of how to build them is current.
Also the old 70 meters are expensive to maintain.
Will the recent success of laser communication make the Big Dishes obsolete one day? Can laser be used to communicate with missions to external planets? How big should the ground based stuff be?
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Will the recent success of laser communication make the Big Dishes obsolete one day? Can laser be used to communicate with missions to external planets? How big should the ground based stuff be?
There are reasons why lasercom probably won't work past Jupiter distance.
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are not off the shelf, but General Dynamics has built more than 10 of them for DSN (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/general-dynamics-satcom-technologies-completes-installation-and-test-of-nasa-deep-space-network-antennas-300284200.html), and continues to build more. So the knowledge of how to build them is current.
I have vague memory of hearing that at least part of the smaller dishes is off-the-shelf technology. Maybe some of the internal stuff is common to other dishes used commercially?
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Will the recent success of laser communication make the Big Dishes obsolete one day? Can laser be used to communicate with missions to external planets? How big should the ground based stuff be?
There are reasons why lasercom probably won't work past Jupiter distance.
What are those reasons?
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Will the recent success of laser communication make the Big Dishes obsolete one day? Can laser be used to communicate with missions to external planets? How big should the ground based stuff be?
There are reasons why lasercom probably won't work past Jupiter distance.
What are those reasons?
Pointing accuracy. But I don't know. You can google all this stuff. I have not heard a detailed DSN briefing in a few years.
This article points about using laser comm at very far distances, but I believe I heard Ralph McNutt (mentioned in the article) say that it gets dicey around Jupiter distance.
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2022/12/07/interstellar-communications-the-pointing-problem/
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Will the recent success of laser communication make the Big Dishes obsolete one day? Can laser be used to communicate with missions to external planets? How big should the ground based stuff be?
There are reasons why lasercom probably won't work past Jupiter distance.
What are those reasons?
There is a discussion about this in the Uranus orbiter and probe thread (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=56219.msg2565825#msg2565825), some of which makes sense. Basically existing optical comms (as being tested on Psyche) go out to about Jupiter. There appear to be no physics reasons it can't work at outer planets, but it would take work to develop. For example, Psyche knows where to point the down-beam by following an up-beam sent from Earth. To do this at the outer planets is impractical, so you need blind pointing. But spacecraft don't usually have that degree of stability or pointing accuracy, so you need a special platform. You need big optical telescopes for receiving, but these are all being used, so you'd need new ones specialized for the job. And so on.)
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are not off the shelf, but General Dynamics has built more than 10 of them for DSN (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/general-dynamics-satcom-technologies-completes-installation-and-test-of-nasa-deep-space-network-antennas-300284200.html), and continues to build more. So the knowledge of how to build them is current.
I have vague memory of hearing that at least part of the smaller dishes is off-the-shelf technology. Maybe some of the internal stuff is common to other dishes used commercially?
JPL also considered large arrays of 6 (https://ipnpr.jpl.nasa.gov/progress_report/42-157/157M.pdf) or 12 meter dishes. These would be off the shelf. Maybe that's what you were thinking of?
One basic tradeoff is receivers vs dishes. For lots of small antennas, the collecting area is cheap, but you need lots of cryogenic receivers, one per dish. For a few big antennas, you need only a few receivers.
Another tradeoff, and maybe the big one for JPL, is commanding. There is no existing technology for arrayed transmitters, which is a harder problem than arrayed receivers. So if you need bigger dishes anyway for commanding and navigation, may as well use them for reception as well.
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are not off the shelf, but General Dynamics has built more than 10 of them for DSN (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/general-dynamics-satcom-technologies-completes-installation-and-test-of-nasa-deep-space-network-antennas-300284200.html), and continues to build more. So the knowledge of how to build them is current.
I have vague memory of hearing that at least part of the smaller dishes is off-the-shelf technology. Maybe some of the internal stuff is common to other dishes used commercially?
JPL also considered large arrays of 6 (https://ipnpr.jpl.nasa.gov/progress_report/42-157/157M.pdf) or 12 meter dishes. These would be off the shelf. Maybe that's what you were thinking of?
One basic tradeoff is receivers vs dishes. For lots of small antennas, the collecting area is cheap, but you need lots of cryogenic receivers, one per dish. For a few big antennas, you need only a few receivers.
Another tradeoff, and maybe the big one for JPL, is commanding. There is no existing technology for arrayed transmitters, which is a harder problem than arrayed receivers. So if you need bigger dishes anyway for commanding and navigation, may as well use them for reception as well.
We're straying just a bit from the core IM-1 topic, but since it's still relevant to this style of mission I'll add this-
Not every contact needs to be a command (uplink) pass. Arrays of less expensive smaller dishes can still have high utility for scheduled downlink-only passes.
If the link to closes with these less expensive options you get potential benefits of additional downlink time.
Deep space missions are constrained by available downlink time much more than uplink time.
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IM announces mission success. Some interesting numbers here - 144 hours of work, 350 MB data gathered.
https://investors.intuitivemachines.com/news-releases/news-release-details/intuitive-machines-historic-im-1-mission-success-american
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IM announces mission success. Some interesting numbers here - 144 hours of work, 350 MB data gathered.
https://investors.intuitivemachines.com/news-releases/news-release-details/intuitive-machines-historic-im-1-mission-success-american (https://investors.intuitivemachines.com/news-releases/news-release-details/intuitive-machines-historic-im-1-mission-success-american)
To be precise, 144 hours of surface operations was a goal that OM-1 exceeded before it suspended operations.
In passing they mentioned “NASA’s $93B Artemis Campaign”
That’s a really big number
OM-1 Fraction of Artemis cost: 0.2%
Fraction of data from the Moon to date: 100%
(Yes, that is contrived.)
Remember, this is a note to investors. If there is a place for the most upbeat perspective it is there, but IMO they have a great accomplishment to report.
edit: decimal place ::) thanks brussell
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IM announces mission success. Some interesting numbers here - 144 hours of work, 350 MB data gathered.
https://investors.intuitivemachines.com/news-releases/news-release-details/intuitive-machines-historic-im-1-mission-success-american
Capture of what they wrote there. PDF is attached below.
Intuitive Machines Historic IM-1 Mission Success: American Ingenuity Never Gives Up
February 29, 2024 at 6:22 PM EST
HOUSTON, Feb. 29, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Intuitive Machines, Inc. (Nasdaq: LUNR, LUNRW) (“Intuitive Machines”) (“Company”), a leading space exploration, infrastructure, and services company, today announced the completion of science and data transmission for all NASA and commercial payloads onboard Odysseus, the Nova-C class lunar lander, after the successful February 22 soft landing on the south pole region of the Moon.
Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus said, “Spaceflight’s unique challenges are conquered on Earth but mastered in space. Our now proven robust lunar program, a national asset, feeds directly into our second and third missions. This success drives our relentless pursuit of performance excellence to benefit the entire industry.”
Intuitive Machines achieved these marquee accomplishments in the Company’s first attempt to land on the Moon:
- Successfully soft-landed the Company’s Nova-C class lunar lander, Odysseus, on the Moon, marking the United States’ first lunar landing in over 50 years since Apollo 17
- Validated the performance of the Company’s proprietary liquid methane and liquid oxygen propulsion system through the first-ever deep space ignition, followed by multiple restarts, repeatedly providing successful spacecraft maneuvers
- Became the first commercial-sector company and NASA CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) provider to successfully land and transmit scientific data to and from the Moon
- Landed Odysseus, farther south than any vehicle in the world has ever soft-landed on the Moon, which we believe is significant given NASA’s $93B Artemis Campaign is targeting the region for human missions
- Traveled over 600,000 miles and softly landed less than one mile from its intended Malapert A landing region
- Transmitted over 350 megabytes of science and engineering data, which was collected across all payloads; NASA confirms mission success
- Exceeded one of the mission objectives to operate 144 hours on the lunar surface and entered standby mode on February 29, 2024, as we await two to three weeks for the next lunar day and a potential for Odysseus’ revival
- Fundamentally disrupted the economics of landing on the Moon through a fixed-price performance contract, demonstrating unprecedented economics and efficiency to commercial customers and NASA
Accomplishing the IM-1 mission required Intuitive Machines to integrate on a global scale. Radio astronomy dishes spread across a dozen countries, international hardware providers, and the strength of the United States domestic supply chain across more than 50 congressional districts were paramount in the IM-1 mission success.
Mr. Altemus continued, “Before this mission, we had an absolute sense of humility and relied on our technical excellence and years of experience to triumph and persevere throughout all the challenges we faced during the mission. Following our unequivocal success, I am emboldened for the future of the U.S. and international lunar economy and Intuitive Machines' future as we believe we can win, execute, and pioneer the future of the cislunar market.”
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https://twitter.com/CrainTim/status/1763655455564242952
The displays in Nova Control turn purple when they lose telemetry. As the spectral power from Odie's radios faded to the noise, the floor and all the displays turned purple, we played Purple Rain and said goodnight. We'll look for Odie with the dawn (like Gandalf). #adlunam
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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.
I believe it's because the Moon is rotating under the orbit (about 3 degrees per day) moving the landing site away from the orbital path.
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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.
People have studied how to get the lowest cost per square meter of receiving area. 18 meter diameter works out to be the cheapest. They can be arrayed together to simulate a larger diameter dish.
The ngVLA is going to build about 200 18m antennae. When that production line gets going they should be quite cheap.
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Will the recent success of laser communication make the Big Dishes obsolete one day? Can laser be used to communicate with missions to external planets? How big should the ground based stuff be?
No, because lasers won't go through cloud cover. I think they have somewhat oversold the benefits of optical communications. Laser comm works best at night. The data rate is lower in daytime. Optical also requires precise pointing, and is not going to work if the spacecraft is tumbling or has fallen over. IM-1 had multiple antennae sending signals in different directions.
The current optical experiment is using a 5m telescope as a receiver. They would like a network of 8 to 12m telescopes as receivers. Those would probably cost about $120 million each, versus $60 million for a 34m radio antenna or $40 million for four 18m antennae. However, they may be able to use Cerenkov type telescopes, which provide a large diameter at a very low price.
More about that in this thread:
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=56579.0
The current pointing system won't work for Uranus. I'm not sure about Saturn. One issue is that it takes a long time for light to make the trip and the Earth moves in its orbit, so they have to point ahead of the earth. Using an image of the Earth might work for pointing at Uranus, but that likely has it's own challenges.
In my opinion the biggest advantage of optical is that it enables a one to two order of magnitude improvement in distance measurements, and hence in solar system gravitational fields.
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The current pointing system won't work for Uranus. I'm not sure about Saturn. One issue is that it takes a long time for light to make the trip and the Earth moves in its orbit, so they have to point ahead of the earth. Using an image of the Earth might work for pointing at Uranus, but that likely has it's own challenges.
Pointing for deep space telecom is performed using ephemeris products for the spacecraft and ground station(s).
No one does or will use an "image of the Earth." for this activity.
The pointing limitation at great distances comes down to the pointing capabilities of the spacecraft and the ground station, not the ability to know where to point.
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So the change in height of the cg is deltaH = (1.268 - 1) = 0.268 units. The potential energy is (m g DeltaH). Tipping over occurs if this potential energy is less than the sideways kinetic energy. Solving for v, the tipping limit is v>Sqrt(2 g DeltaH)
For g = 9.807 m/s² on Earth and 1.625 m/s² on the Moon, this gives tipping speeds of only 2.3 m/s on Earth and 0.9 m/s on the Moon for the IM-1 lander!
I forgot to scale the deltaH by the actual dimensions of the vehicle! The width of the landing legs is 4.6 m.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/22/intuitive-machines-lunr-im-1-moon-landing-for-nasa.html
With six legs, this gives a 360/6 = 60° spacing between the legs. Thus, the minimum radius of the landing legs is (4.6/2)*cos(60/2) = 1.992 m. Dr. Metzger showed the normalised radius as 0.78. Thus, the actual deltaH is 0.268*1.992/0.78 = 0.684 m, which gives a tip over speed of 1.17*sqrt(g) or 3.66 m/s on Earth and 1.49 m/s on the Moon. My apologies to IM for the wrong calculation. Still, these speeds are pretty low. The Lunar tip over speed is a little above walking speed on Earth.
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So the change in height of the cg is deltaH = (1.268 - 1) = 0.268 units. The potential energy is (m g DeltaH). Tipping over occurs if this potential energy is less than the sideways kinetic energy. Solving for v, the tipping limit is v>Sqrt(2 g DeltaH)
For g = 9.807 m/s² on Earth and 1.625 m/s² on the Moon, this gives tipping speeds of only 2.3 m/s on Earth and 0.9 m/s on the Moon for the IM-1 lander!
I forgot to scale the deltaH by the actual dimensions of the vehicle! The width of the landing legs is 4.6 m.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/22/intuitive-machines-lunr-im-1-moon-landing-for-nasa.html
With six legs, this gives a 360/6 = 60° spacing between the legs. Thus, the minimum radius of the landing legs is (4.6/2)*cos(60/2) = 1.992 m. Dr. Metzger showed the normalised radius as 0.78. Thus, the actual deltaH is 0.268*1.992/0.78 = 0.684 m, which gives a tip over speed of 1.17*sqrt(g) or 3.66 m/s on Earth and 1.49 m/s on the Moon. My apologies to IM for the wrong calculation. Still, these speeds are pretty low (the Lunar tip over speed is equal to walking speed on Earth) and so in hindsight its not surprising the vehicle tipped over. Hopefully, future vehicles will have a lower centre of mass and wider legs to prevent this problem.
Hopefully the lens cap will be off the LIDAR!
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IM announces mission success. Some interesting numbers here - 144 hours of work, 350 MB data gathered.
https://investors.intuitivemachines.com/news-releases/news-release-details/intuitive-machines-historic-im-1-mission-success-american (https://investors.intuitivemachines.com/news-releases/news-release-details/intuitive-machines-historic-im-1-mission-success-american)
To be precise, 144 hours of surface operations was a goal that OM-1 exceeded before it suspended operations.
In passing they mentioned “NASA’s $93B Artemis Campaign”
That’s a really big number
OM-1 Fraction of Artemis cost: 2%
Fraction of data from the Moon to date: 100%
(Yes, that is contrived.)
Remember, this is a note to investors. If there is a place for the most upbeat perspective it is there, but IMO they have a great accomplishment to report.
How to loose all your customers even before you have customers:
after the successful February 22 soft landing on the south pole region of the Moon.
Lie to them, assuming they are completely stupid and completely unaware of what actually happened.
How to find new customers:
"Despite a very hard landing which almost destroyed our spacecraft, our engineers were able to save the mission by means of complex and smart workarounds, which ended up allowing us to receive data from all payloads, gathering 350 MB of data, even from payloads which were unable to accomplish all or part of their tasks, and even without any antenna directly pointing to Earth. "
This is how you earn the trust of your future customers.
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Snip
Hopefully the lens cap will be off the LIDAR!
If that was supposed to be funny, it failed
If that was supposed to be snark, please keep it to yourself.
There was no “lens cap”
It was a complex laser safety arrangement where something had to be ADDED to allow it to fire in space.
Have you ever followed or written a laser safety plan for a class IV laser?
Nether have I but the ones we wrote, formalized, and followed for Class III lasers were onerous enough.
Jim described a discipline for how others have done this successfully, and I’m sure that IM will adopt it ir an equivalent and do a thorough scrub for other places where more discipline and other’s experience will help.
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Pointing for deep space telecom is performed using ephemeris products for the spacecraft and ground station(s).
No one does or will use an "image of the Earth." for this activity.
The pointing limitation at great distances comes down to the pointing capabilities of the spacecraft and the ground station, not the ability to know where to point.
I'm talking about deep space optical communications, not radio systems. While the spacecraft is responsible for coarse pointing, the optical transmitter handles fine pointing. Beacon aided pointing is employed by the current demonstration on Psyche. The ground station emits a reference beam which the optical transmitter finds and then tracks. For longer distances in the future, beaconless pointing techniques have been considered, using star trackers and thermal earth imaging.
"The flight system tracks the beacon, and using spacecraft ephemeris and attitude information calculates the point ahead angle required for downlink "
https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/tglavich_dsoc.pdf?emrc=710136
Here is a paper titled "Acquisition tracking and pointing using Earth thermal images for deep space optical communications"
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1251611
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Steve Altemus interview on the CNBC Manifest Space podcast:
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/manifest-space-with-morgan-brennan/id1680523433?i=1000647715331
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I have to give Intuitive Machines credit for trying a lot of new things. Instead of using DSN, they put together their own antenna network. That was probably a cost cutting move, and I'm not sure it worked out well for them. One thing that DSN is very good at is communicating with troubled spacecraft that have very weak signals. DSN is also good at navigating spacecraft, and Intuitive had trouble with that too.
They seem to have a new and interesting way to manage the fuel and oxidizer involving high pressure composite tanks. The drawback of that is that the tanks might be heavy. The launch mass of IM-1 was 1900 kg with a 100 kg payload. The launch mass of Astrobotic's Peregrine was 1283 kg, with an initial 90 kg payload which they plan to uprate to 265 kg. I'm really not seeing the benefit of methalox here.
For science missions like drilling or deploying a rover, they will have to land the right way up. There is a lot to improve on the second flight.
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How to loose all your customers even before you have customers
Their customers have all publicly expressed that they are happy with the data they have received from their payloads delivered to the surface of the moon, and most have payloads on future IM landers.
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I have to give Intuitive Machines credit for trying a lot of new things. Instead of using DSN, they put together their own antenna network. That was probably a cost cutting move, and I'm not sure it worked out well for them. One thing that DSN is very good at is communicating with troubled spacecraft that have very weak signals. DSN is also good at navigating spacecraft, and Intuitive had trouble with that too.
I think the main issue they had is trying to combine a bunch of independent ground stations all with very different capabilities.
Hopefully this situation will improve. There are lots of commercial dish networks for working in Earth orbit, hopefully some of these might see opportunities to build bigger antennas for all the lunar missions. This would then allow global coverage through a single operator.
DSN is going to be very busy if all the commercial lunar missions end up using them all the time. DSN needs to ensure it can continue to support all the deep space and planetary missions going on.
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So what hapened to announced release of Eaglecam?
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The current pointing system won't work for Uranus. I'm not sure about Saturn. One issue is that it takes a long time for light to make the trip and the Earth moves in its orbit, so they have to point ahead of the earth. Using an image of the Earth might work for pointing at Uranus, but that likely has it's own challenges.
Pointing for deep space telecom is performed using ephemeris products for the spacecraft and ground station(s).
No one does or will use an "image of the Earth." for this activity.
The pointing limitation at great distances comes down to the pointing capabilities of the spacecraft and the ground station, not the ability to know where to point.
The current optical comms on Psyche does not use an image of the Earth, but it does use a strong uplink laser to decide where to point, as the spacecraft can't point accurately enough. So the spacecraft points the telescope in the general direction, then uses the uplink (not an image of Earth) for the detailed pointing. (https://psyche.asu.edu/2023/11/17/nasas-deep-space-optical-comm-demo-sends-receives-first-data/)
"The tech demo achieved “first light” in the early hours of Nov. 14 after its flight laser transceiver – a cutting-edge instrument aboard Psyche capable of sending and receiving near-infrared signals – locked onto a powerful uplink laser beacon transmitted from the Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory at JPL’s Table Mountain Facility near Wrightwood, California. The uplink beacon helped the transceiver aim its downlink laser back to Palomar (which is 100 miles, or 130 kilometers, south of Table Mountain) while automated systems on the transceiver and ground stations fine-tuned its pointing."
This particular "use the uplink to know where to aim the downlink" does not extend to outer planets well. There are folks working on blind pointing for optical (https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20170001298/downloads/20170001298.pdf), like we do for radio now, but this needs extremely good spacecraft attitude info, optical alignment, and stability.
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Found something mysterious about Eaglecam: deployed but failed?
were able to eject it, and (we) ejected it about 4 meters away from the vehicle safely. However, either in camera or in the Wi-Fi signal back to the lander, something might not be working correctly
https://news.erau.edu/headlines/eaglecam-updates-embry-riddle-device-lands-on-moon
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There are two very different ways of looking at this mission, and we see both of them here.
One is "Hey, it basically worked, with some problems. Fix those bugs and next time should be OK".
The other is to point out that ""Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect.” Space flight is less forgiving still." (https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/blueshift/index.php/2016/02/29/release-the-beasts) There were definitely instances of carelessness and neglect on this mission. It was able to overcome them, at least to some extent, this particular time, but this seems like beginner's luck and a bad recipe for future success.
Depending on which view you emphasize, you can see the glass as 9/10 full or 9/10 empty. My personal view is that they got awfully lucky. We'll know a lot more after the next mission.
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There are two very different ways of looking at this mission, and we see both of them here.
One is "Hey, it basically worked, with some problems. Fix those bugs and next time should be OK".
The other is to point out that ""Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect.” Space flight is less forgiving still." (https://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/blueshift/index.php/2016/02/29/release-the-beasts) There were definitely instances of carelessness and neglect on this mission. It was able to overcome them, at least to some extent, this particular time, but this seems like beginner's luck and a bad recipe for future success.
Depending on which view you emphasize, you can see the glass as 9/10 full or 9/10 empty. My personal view is that they got awfully lucky. We'll know a lot more after the next mission.
Except sometimes carelessness and neglect can also be wholly attributed to budget constraints. Not trying to paint everything with a single brush, but everything is not black/white. Gray is most of it. ;)
But like all things, A LOT more can be talked about/inferred on the second try. Same mistakes/problems again?....I will stand by any "carelessness and neglect" comment at that point. IM-1 was the learning lander(and from the pressers...they truly seemed to learn a lot). IM-2 would, to me, be the operational one. Time will tell and I can't wait!!! So much more exciting times ahead for all space fans!
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In passing they mentioned “NASA’s $93B Artemis Campaign”
That’s a really big number
OM-1 Fraction of Artemis cost: 2%
Fraction of data from the Moon to date: 100%
(Yes, that is contrived.)
Do you mean IM-1? Shouldn't that be 0.12% ?
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In passing they mentioned “NASA’s $93B Artemis Campaign”
That’s a really big number
OM-1 Fraction of Artemis cost: 2%
Fraction of data from the Moon to date: 100%
(Yes, that is contrived.)
Do you mean IM-1? Shouldn't that be 0.12% ?
Or 0.27%, if you divide IM-1's $248 million cost to date (including IM's own portion) by the $93 billion for Artemis.
But who's splitting hairs? It's a bargain, and a good sign for things to come, no matter what gradation of "partial success" anyone assigns to IM-1...IMO, anyway.
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Steve Altemus interview on the CNBC Manifest Space podcast:
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/manifest-space-with-morgan-brennan/id1680523433?i=1000647715331
Notes on the above post mission interview below.
Data brought back
- have all data back for science payloads, both commercial and NASA
- have all vehicle performance data, with pictures
Landing
- suggests 12 degree slope played a significant part in losing the landing gear
Assessing the data
- will take next 30 days to reconstruct mission using the data brought back
- then improvements and design changes will be determined
Initial assessment
- prop system performed better than anticipated
- flight control (sans altimeter) worked perfectly
- helium RCS regulators got too cold at certain in-transit attitudes necessary for antenna pointing
- those started to seep helium
- solution is to make sure they get more sun
- ground stations
- some issues with configuration agreement between stations
- other problems with the IM baseband units added to those receivers
- had some spotty communication at times
- one of the biggest items
- landing gear
- handled a landing harder than it was designed for better than expected
- expects the solution for the broken leg is a softer landing, "but we'll assess that."
Timeline for IM-2
- more important to land softly than land sooner
- will set a launch date once they're certain the vehicle's right
Surviving lunar night
- never planned to wake back up when designing mission
- do have plan to survive lunar night, but that was for future missions
- still, worth a shot - set the lander to get ready for commands should it wake up
- if it wakes, that will be amazing data on the batteries and flight computer
- expects long term the key is RTGs - has nuclear energy partner (zeno power)
- that project is "always 30 months away"
Medium term
- three missions planned
- expect late 2024, early 2025
- need to do the mission review first
- will fly Nova C lander at least three times
- then Nova D, a lot more cargo, maybe a metric ton to the surface
Potential customers showing interest
- governments showing interest
- japan, australia, and 'some european and middle eastern countries'
- sponsorship interest, 'people who want to put their name in the history books on the moon'
- columbia
- IM will replace some materials currently used on lander with the columbia thermal insulator flown on IM-1
Payload feedback from customers
- NASA thrilled to have LN-1, NDL, RFMG at TRL 9.
- EagleCam did deploy, but didn't get an image back
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expects long term the key is RTGs - has nuclear energy partner (zeno power)
You don't need an RTG to survive the Lunar night. A less expensive RHU (radiosotope heating unit) like that used on the Apollo 11 seismometer and Lunakhod rovers is sufficient.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_heater_unit
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" IM-1's $248 million cost to date (including IM's own portion)"
I don't think this is a good figure. It is the sum of two numbers we have been given: NASA paid $118M (assuming they gave full payment for the delivery) and IM spent $130M. But the $130M would most likely include most of what NASA paid in installments prior to launch. You can't just add the numbers together.
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https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/clps/nasa-collects-first-surface-science-in-decades-via-commercial-moon-mission/ (https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/clps/nasa-collects-first-surface-science-in-decades-via-commercial-moon-mission/)
This summary of the results from NASA's instruments on IM-1 includes this tantalizing statement:
"The Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies was powered on and captured images during transit and several days after landing but was not successfully commanded to capture images of the lander rocket plume interaction with the lunar surface during landing."
With any luck we will get something useful from these cameras. If they are not released earlier they will be in PDS eventually.
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" IM-1's $248 million cost to date (including IM's own portion)"
I don't think this is a good figure. It is the sum of two numbers we have been given: NASA paid $118M (assuming they gave full payment for the delivery) and IM spent $130M. But the $130M would most likely include most of what NASA paid in installments prior to launch. You can't just add the numbers together.
I believe that NASA may also have provided services, such as thermal/vac testing, without cost.
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expects long term the key is RTGs - has nuclear energy partner (zeno power)
You don't need an RTG to survive the Lunar night. A less expensive RHU (radiosotope heating unit) like that used on the Apollo 11 seismometer and Lunakhod rovers is sufficient.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_heater_unit
I expect he said RTGs because that's what they have a contract to help support:
https://investors.intuitivemachines.com/news-releases/news-release-details/nasa-selects-intuitive-machines-team-develop-survive-lunar-night
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The Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies was powered on and captured images during transit and several days after landing but was not successfully commanded to capture images of the lander rocket plume interaction with the lunar surface during landing.
With any luck we will get something useful from these cameras. If they are not released earlier they will be in PDS eventually.
Not commanded to capture plume interactions ... because ... the lander guidance believed it was still 100m above the lunar surface when in actuality it was about to make contact?
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No plume images, but given the limitations of the other images we have seen from the surface, any new one might be a nice addition.
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Not commanded to capture plume interactions ... because ... the lander guidance believed it was still 100m above the lunar surface when in actuality it was about to make contact?
That, and because there was a problem with the serial port!
SCALPSS issue
- a hardware failure in the serial port kept them from collecting data during descent
- fixed that after landing
- even if that hadn't happened, due to the flight computer not expecting landing at the altitude it happened, SCALPSS wouldn't have been triggered ("...is my understanding")
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Will the recent success of laser communication make the Big Dishes obsolete one day? Can laser be used to communicate with missions to external planets? How big should the ground based stuff be?
There are reasons why lasercom probably won't work past Jupiter distance.
What are those reasons?
Pointing accuracy. But I don't know. You can google all this stuff. I have not heard a detailed DSN briefing in a few years.
This article points about using laser comm at very far distances, but I believe I heard Ralph McNutt (mentioned in the article) say that it gets dicey around Jupiter distance.
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2022/12/07/interstellar-communications-the-pointing-problem/
That doesn't sound right. Pointing accuracy should correlate to the beam divergence angle, irrespective of how far Earth is.
Maybe it's just too hard to pack enough power into the transmitter.
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Will the recent success of laser communication make the Big Dishes obsolete one day? Can laser be used to communicate with missions to external planets? How big should the ground based stuff be?
There are reasons why lasercom probably won't work past Jupiter distance.
What are those reasons?
Pointing accuracy. But I don't know. You can google all this stuff. I have not heard a detailed DSN briefing in a few years.
This article points about using laser comm at very far distances, but I believe I heard Ralph McNutt (mentioned in the article) say that it gets dicey around Jupiter distance.
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2022/12/07/interstellar-communications-the-pointing-problem/
Pointing accuracy? A laser transceiver uses a small telescope as its "antenna". Pointing a small telescope from earth to Jupiter or from Jupiter to Earth is well understood. Max speed of light delay is 52 minutes one way, so you probably don't even need to compensate: just aim at the center of earth with a beam whose divergence covers Earth. If you are using a larger telescope (tighter beam) you still track your receiver based on the center of the Earth image with a computed offset to account for the (moving) location on Earth of the transmitter. You track your transmitter based on the center of the Earth image with a different computed offset based on where the receiving telescope will be based on location, rotation, and revolution. Space telescopes (Hubble, JWST) have much tighter pointing constraints and they seem to work just fine.
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https://youtu.be/U4P-tcCgruI
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Why It’s So Challenging to Land Upright on the Moon:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/04/science/moon-landing-sideways-gravity.html
During the visit to Intuitive Machines, Tim Crain, the company’s chief technology officer, said the spacecraft had been designed to stay upright when landing even on a slope of 10 degrees or more. The navigation software was programmed to look for a spot where the slope was five degrees or less.
Because the laser instruments on Odysseus for measuring altitude were not working during descent, the spacecraft landed faster than planned on a 12-degree slope. That exceeded its design limits. Odysseus skidded along the surface, broke one of its six legs and tipped to its side.
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Why It’s So Challenging to Land Upright on the Moon:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/04/science/moon-landing-sideways-gravity.html
During the visit to Intuitive Machines, Tim Crain, the company’s chief technology officer, said the spacecraft had been designed to stay upright when landing even on a slope of 10 degrees or more. The navigation software was programmed to look for a spot where the slope was five degrees or less.
Because the laser instruments on Odysseus for measuring altitude were not working during descent, the spacecraft landed faster than planned on a 12-degree slope. That exceeded its design limits. Odysseus skidded along the surface, broke one of its six legs and tipped to its side.
Hmmm... Doesn't 12 degrees fall under "10 degrees or more"?
Grumble grumble.
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Why It’s So Challenging to Land Upright on the Moon:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/04/science/moon-landing-sideways-gravity.html
During the visit to Intuitive Machines, Tim Crain, the company’s chief technology officer, said the spacecraft had been designed to stay upright when landing even on a slope of 10 degrees or more. The navigation software was programmed to look for a spot where the slope was five degrees or less.
Because the laser instruments on Odysseus for measuring altitude were not working during descent, the spacecraft landed faster than planned on a 12-degree slope. That exceeded its design limits. Odysseus skidded along the surface, broke one of its six legs and tipped to its side.
Hmmm... Doesn't 12 degrees fall under "10 degrees or more"?
Grumble grumble.
Tsk, tsk. Have to take into account that Odysseus was supposed to landed with very little or zero horizontal velocity. The landing gear wasn't designed for a rolling helo landing. ::)
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Why It’s So Challenging to Land Upright on the Moon:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/04/science/moon-landing-sideways-gravity.html
During the visit to Intuitive Machines, Tim Crain, the company’s chief technology officer, said the spacecraft had been designed to stay upright when landing even on a slope of 10 degrees or more. The navigation software was programmed to look for a spot where the slope was five degrees or less.
Because the laser instruments on Odysseus for measuring altitude were not working during descent, the spacecraft landed faster than planned on a 12-degree slope. That exceeded its design limits. Odysseus skidded along the surface, broke one of its six legs and tipped to its side.
Hmmm... Doesn't 12 degrees fall under "10 degrees or more"?
Grumble grumble.
Tsk, tsk. Have to take into account that Odysseus was supposed to landed with very little or zero horizontal velocity. The landing gear wasn't designed for a rolling helo landing. ::)
Let me guess, designed to withstand 1 m/s or more?
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Why It’s So Challenging to Land Upright on the Moon:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/04/science/moon-landing-sideways-gravity.html
During the visit to Intuitive Machines, Tim Crain, the company’s chief technology officer, said the spacecraft had been designed to stay upright when landing even on a slope of 10 degrees or more. The navigation software was programmed to look for a spot where the slope was five degrees or less.
Because the laser instruments on Odysseus for measuring altitude were not working during descent, the spacecraft landed faster than planned on a 12-degree slope. That exceeded its design limits. Odysseus skidded along the surface, broke one of its six legs and tipped to its side.
Hmmm... Doesn't 12 degrees fall under "10 degrees or more"?
Grumble grumble.
Tsk, tsk. Have to take into account that Odysseus was supposed to landed with very little or zero horizontal velocity. The landing gear wasn't designed for a rolling helo landing. ::)
Let me guess, designed to withstand 1 m/s or more?
Yes. IIRC the Blackhawk helo was supposed to be able to do rolling landing initially with the rear wheel before pitching down on the forward wheels. The Blackhawk helo got the reverse tricycle landing gear for harsher landings that legacy landing skids couldn't handled.
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https://twitter.com/ILOA_Hawaii/status/1765135232221802734
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Why It’s So Challenging to Land Upright on the Moon:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/04/science/moon-landing-sideways-gravity.html
During the visit to Intuitive Machines, Tim Crain, the company’s chief technology officer, said the spacecraft had been designed to stay upright when landing even on a slope of 10 degrees or more. The navigation software was programmed to look for a spot where the slope was five degrees or less.
Because the laser instruments on Odysseus for measuring altitude were not working during descent, the spacecraft landed faster than planned on a 12-degree slope. That exceeded its design limits. Odysseus skidded along the surface, broke one of its six legs and tipped to its side.
Hmmm... Doesn't 12 degrees fall under "10 degrees or more"?
Grumble grumble.
I expect they couldn't measure the slope because the altitude lasers weren't working.
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https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1765790656478277879
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Crosspost:
https://mainenginecutoff.com/podcast/269
T+269: IM-1 and Beyond (with Tim Crain, Co-Founder and CTO of Intuitive Machines)
MARCH 7, 2024
Tim Crain, Co-Founder and CTO of Intuitive Machines, joins me to talk about their recent IM-1 mission to land Odysseus on the Moon as part of NASA’s CLPS program.
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A moderately copious amount of notes from the MECO podcast linked above follows.
IM-1 MECO podcast 2024-03-07
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IM-2 timing mentioned as "the end of the year."
Hot wash [military term; an after action report]
- Coming soon, week of the 18th.
- Teams get together, present findings from mission data for their systems, give recommendations going forward.
- Will have a panel to decide what goes into IM-2.
- E.g. change the procedure for checking flight cables, "that's an easy one."
- For some, will judge destabilizing IM-2 in leadup to launch not worth it, will put those into IM-3.
- For even more disruptive changes, or things that need mass, put that into the Nova D project.
- The fourth category is affectionately called "nah."
- Well, maybe someday. Put those on the shelf.
- Compares to Project Morpheus, where they went through this process after the first Morpheus lander failed.
- Had the Bravo lander for Morpheus 60% complete.
- Got the agency to accept the failure as the price of moving fast.
- Did exactly the same process after that failure.
- Had ~180 recommendations for changes to the Bravo vehicle.
- Only implemented maybe 70 of those.
- Don't want to change so much so fast that you lose the heritage of the mission you just performed.
Schedule a concern?
- Yes, because of lighting at Shackleton.
- Most spots on the moon, you get 14 days of light, 14 of night.
- But you have seasons at the poles.
- Q4 of this year is a really good lighting period for a south pole mission.
- Could move that into early 25 if they have to, but can't delay indefinitely.
- At some point, you have to deal with it then being southern polar winter on the moon.
- That would be a bad time for IM-2.
- A significant risk for mission success would still win out over any schedule concerns, to be clear.
What would you do today if Odysseus was teleported back here, ready to go again right now?
- Physically, just the fix for the laser safety disable.
- Everything else left as it was.
- Non hardware changes?
- Software mods.
- Configuration management.
- Some lessons learned with the ground stations.
- Confident if you did those, the mission would be smooth.
- Things that worked, just not as expected first time around can be adjusted for on IM-2.
IM-2 physical progress
- Have all the materials.
- Already stacked the tanks.
- Structural components are done.
- Have the avionics.
- Mostly assembly right now.
- A few things here and there.
- Another pressure transducer here.
- A larger heater near this RCS pod; it got cold on IM-1.
- Relatively small changes.
IM-2 payloads
- Integrated the lunar outpost rover / Nokia 4G LTE experiment into their flatsat testing of the lander.
- Built the garage and deployment mechanism for the rover, "garage comes down and pivots as it lands."
- Hopper is ready for flight "with just a couple mods."
- Been through thermal vac testing.
- PRIME-1 drill still needs to be mounted to final location.
- "All the pieces are here."
Antenna pointing on the way out requiring more RCS than expected
- 100s of hours of operational training pre-launch.
- Examples of things that slipped through that training:
- From ground station to ground station, misconfiguration issues.
- E.g. causing what was expected to be a smooth handover to be a 45m gap.
- On a 7 day cruise to the moon, a 45m gap is not necessarily a big deal.
- But recovery logic in the comms system made it power cycle after 15m of signal loss.
- And if that doesn't reestablish comms, switch to other hemi antenna.
- So there was a period of the vehicle trying to reestablish comms by switching antennas.
- Took awhile to understand everything that was going on there.
- In the first few days of the mission, may have "over-responded."
- The vehicle is using a new antenna now? Use RCS to point it to earth.
- After those few days, understood the problem.
- At that point, used less helium, mitigated those comm dropouts. Everything got smoother.
- First three days definitely had a learning curve.
South pole as a comms environment
- Definitely worried about multipath signal propagation, especially for IM-2 which is even more south than IM-1.
- When you're very close to the south pole, the Earth is on the horizon.
- That means the signal will be more likely to interact with the lunar surface.
- IM-1 hadn't had as much prep for that, because it was originally going to be a mid latitude mission.
- IM-2 was in work, though, so they had been working on south pole prep anyway.
- Tilted solar array, changed thermal coatings.
- Landing on its side caused all lander transmissions to bounce off the moon.
- That's why it took a few days after landing to get a grip on receiving lander data.
- Had to account for polarization changes to get data back.
- IM-2 antenna is phased array and also has articulation.
- Should help manage multipath physically.
IM-1 vs IM-2
- IM-1 was "as stripped down as we could make it", "lean, lean, lean"
- IM-2 has more features.
- Better cameras.
- Linear phased array high gain can follow Earth as it moves in the sky.
- Can also use that to experiment with multipath.
- E.g. it might be better to aim a little above the Earth to avoid lunar surface interactions.
Getting into lunar orbit
- Why no TCM-3?
- Later maneuvers cost more, less time to determine new orbit and less time to fix errors.
- Early maneuvers have higher error propagation concerns.
- Waived TCM-2, kept what was on the books as TCM-3 (now the 2nd maneuver)
- Did Commissioning Maneuver (CM) early, 20 m/s
- Planned to be that much regardless of corrections needed, in order to exercise engine across desired profile.
- Took them from a 2000 km flyby to 3000 km on other side of the "B plane." So added more energy than needed.
- TCM-1 took them from 3000 km flyby to 350-400 km. Closer to where they wanted to be.
- Thought after TCM-3 they were at a 100-130 km closest approach. Orbit determination said 120 km.
- Orbit determination at this distance is an art. Based on range/doppler data from one station at a time. No GPS.
- Thought they were in the corridor needed. Making more changes this late might introduce error the size of the desired correction.
- Post-LOI onboard indications were 95 km x 85 km orbit.
- This is all current thinking before all the received data is analyzed in the coming weeks. It may change.
- Three things at work for getting in the orbit they ended up in
- Error ellipse of orbit determination process. They were looking at the mean, but ended up on the low side.
- Had an overburn - Tailoff after engine cutoff that still generated thrust.
- Can compensate for that in maneuver planning on future missions.
- 850 m/s LOI, overburned by 2.5 m/s.
- Happy with that performance.
- But for example, the LDI burn to go from 100 km circular to 100 km by 10 km is 15 m/s.
- So an overburn of that size in a braking maneuver is significant.
- Then add in mascons - lumpy mass concentrations around the moon that move your apolune and perilune around in LLO.
- Team looking at burn performance was happy at the time, thought they were in a good orbit.
- Team looking at imagery was saying, hey, these images look a little closer than they should be.
- Team doing the orbital determination agreed.
- There are two pods of navigation equipment; one on each side of the lander
- The Terrian Relative Navigation side could range find out to 80 km.
- Could turn on that TRN pod, and if it got returns, that's a confirmation that the altitude is less than 80 km.
- It'd be a good bit of data to have.
- However, the pod got no returns.
- So do you say, whelp, looks like our altitude's fine, the laser isn't returning any measurements?
- Or is the laser not firing and on top of that you're *still* low?
- And if it's not firing, why? Is there a procedure order mistake? Etc.?
- Got people working in a back room on that.
- While that was happening, image team gave more confirmation of lower orbit than desired.
- That lower orbit could be made worse by mascons as time passes and you fly over them.
- Have a lot of gravity data about the moon, and that's integrated into the Copernicus trajectory planner.
- Some of that data suggested their perilune might raise itself over time, but they didn't want to take the chance that was wrong.
- Had some lunar correction maneuver capability built into the mission, more thinking about early burn shutoff than the alternative.
- And so, worried they might be even lower, they raised the orbit back up.
- "Would have to look at the data", but think they ended up 180 km x 20 km.
Fun with orbital mechanics
- When they first got to the moon, had a 2 hr period, exactly as desired.
- So some assurances came from LOS / AOS happening when expected.
- However, the period timing is determined solely by the semi-major axis.
- So a 100 km x 100 km orbit has the same period as a 150 km x 50 km orbit.
Lunar Correction Maneuver (LCM) burn
- Went like clockwork
- Team went from having to figure out in-space thermal timing for ox/meth feedlines in CM/TCM-1 (and having to abort those burns the first time around), to dialing in valve and timing settings, which got all further burns occurring exactly on time, including the TCM.
- Didn't need a software reload for the LCM burn, it was a pre-planned contingency
Why was the accidental low perilune just where you needed it to be able to slot into something resembling the descent orbit after LCM?
- LOI was done over the north pole.
- From Earth, lander went out to the lunar radius and waited for the moon to catch up
- If you were on Odie at the time, you'd see the moon coming "straight at you, like the Death Star."
- But if you look at it from the lunar reference frame, the lander is dropping in from over the lunar north pole
- So it worked out that an overburn would result in a more southerly perilune.
- It wasn't *exactly* where they wanted it, but they adjusted it - just did a non ideal burn that moved things around the way they needed.
- [NOTE: Tim Crain was still talking about 100x80 orbits here as if they were in an orbit like that before the LCM burn - It may be that the "we raised the perilune" line from press conferences is confused, misunderstood or was based on old data - it doesn't sound to me like he's saying they raised perilune to 20 km, and he may not have understood that Anthony was implying that in this question; whether the pre-LCM-burn perilune was below 20 km remains unclear to me having listened to this.]
- Tim Crain was mentored by Emil Schiesser, a mathematician who played a significant role in orbit planning and determination for Apollo.
- On the day before Neil Armstrong retired from NASA in 1971, journalist Robert Sherrod asked him who on the Apollo team stood out in the astronaut’s mind in terms of talent and ability. Armstrong grinned and said, "Emil Schiesser! I’d vote for Emil every time." (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/twenty-people-who-made-apollo-happen-180972374/)
- Schiesser relayed that the Apollo missions had a very simplistic approach to their orbits early on, but in later missions began to bias those orbits to come in more elliptical over the landing site. Which they did as they became more comfortable and had more proficiency with what the CSM and LM could do. Some of those performance savings they got from injecting into something closer to their pre-landing orbit were used to afford the mass of the lunar rovers included on later vehicles.
- They'll be looking at what to do in the future for insertion based on their experience with IM-1.
Exact numbers
- There are going to be papers that they're going to present at conferences and in journals over the next year.
- Probably 20 or 30; he wants the teams to tell their story.
- Trying to walk a line between transparency and quoting things that then change as they continue to look at the data.
- So the information will come out, just probably not in a podcast.
What if they hadn't fired up the lasers due to the overburn?
- Thinks the result would have been the same.
- Would have been some amount of panic once they reached 15 km and the lasers didn't come online.
- But since they didn't manage the NDL miracle hack, the sensors available would have been the same.
Making your own comms network
- Aside: when CLPS came out, IM was a company of about 30 people. [Currently ~250, iirc].
- The CLPS program specified to not count on the DSN as a communications asset.
- IM "maybe read a little bit more into that" than intended.
- What CLPS really meant was that you need to engage with NASA, get a Space Act agreement, go through the gauntlet of getting DSN time.
- It wasn't a mandate not to use it.
- But they also said that if there's a spacecraft emergency, you may not have priority depending on what else is happening with other assets.
- Add to that the fact that IM knows DSN is oversubscribed already.
- So they put together a partnership with KSAT (Kongsberg Satellite Services) out to half-lunar distance.
- Then started to talk to radio astronomy sites to get the rest of the way.
- Deployed IM's own baseband units to those sites.
- So e.g. at the Parkes dish in Australia is an IM avionics/radio box plugged into their dish.
- Had a Space Act agreement with NASA to do tracking of LRO (tx a signal, got it back) so IM could test infrastructure, baseband units.
- Also did one way tracking of Artemis. (just listened)
- Great praise for the international team they worked with. Parkes Australia, Okinawa, Cornwall, Hartebeesthoek.
Relay network around the moon
- IM will still need large ground stations for a 'trunk line' to the moon to get data from that relay network once it's there.
- Landers using the network will be able to use GEO-distance radios that are ubiquitously available, not need to e.g. devote mass to a 2m dish for high bandwidth.
- In the future, could see laser comms back to Earth. That would be Gb/s.
- People have talked about sending laser comms to MEO assets which then use RF to communicate with ground. Avoid optical atmospheric problems (clouds).
- Sees a cell phone style usage model for their lunar comms network. "Roaming charges."
Commercial customers
- Very important to have a cadence of missions
- Customers will come to you with a date that they'll be ready.
- Very valuable to be able to have a mission you're already flying that fits that bill.
Nova D
- Really want to migrate to this lander
- 500 kg to surface, can still launch on a Falcon 9.
- ~3.5x more payload, not 3.5x more expensive to fly.
- At that point, can talk about dropping the price to fly to the lunar surface.
- (current prices for CLPS landers: ~$800,000 to $1,000,000 / kg to surface.)
Comms at a public space company
- Most public aerospace companies have massive legal, public affairs departments.
- Public affairs at IM: a staff of 3.
- Very tough to transparently share info in real time when you know that if you wait, you might get better / different info.
- That introduced tension.
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@theinternetftw thanks for take time for put all this information together. I think a like is not enough
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IM-1 Mission Recap and Farewell Speech
Mar 15, 2024
Our official IM-1 mission ended on February 29th, as Odie was not designed to survive the moon’s harsh temperatures without sunlight. While we wait for the possibility of hearing from Odie once the sun shines on the solar panels prior to the end of the month, watch our mission recap below, which includes a heartfelt farewell from Mission Director @astro2fish, commemorating the lander's groundbreaking voyage and the wealth of knowledge delivered from the lunar surface.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=PxfgLuALTRk
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https://twitter.com/ILOA_Hawaii/status/1769818336357978551
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Odysseus may have just woken up
https://twitter.com/amsatdl/status/1770549828960784465
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Alas, no.
https://twitter.com/amsatdl/status/1770579682188050591 (https://twitter.com/amsatdl/status/1770579682188050591)
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Space.com reporting end of misison https://www.space.com/intuitive-machines-im-1-moon-mission-ends
Intuitive Machines also confirming on their website https://www.intuitivemachines.com/im-1
As previously announced on February 29th, our IM-1 mission ended seven days after landing, as Odysseus’ mission was not intended to survive the harsh temperatures of the lunar night. Before its batteries were depleted, flight controllers tucked Odie into a configuration that could call home if various systems outperformed manufacturer expectations.
Intuitive Machines started listening for Odie’s wake-up signal on March 20, when we projected enough sunlight would potentially charge the lander's power system and turn on its radio.
As of March 23rd at 1030 A.M. Central Standard Time, flight controllers decided their projections were correct, and Odie’s power system would not complete another call home. This confirms that Odie has permanently faded after cementing its legacy into history as the first commercial lunar lander to land on the Moon.
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https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1780960787315511432
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Pre-launch IM-2 updates should probably go in the IM-2 launch thread (https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=53795.0) unless they also give new post-mission information on IM-1.