A day after his Nova-C class robotic lander touched the moon surface, machines with intuitive knowledge confirmed that its mission is now over.
In a statement posted on its website, the company based in Houston, Texas stated that its lander, named Ethana, had about 250 meters (820 ft) from its intended landing site, and inside a pit in Mons Monson near Lunar South Pol near Lunar South Poll.
The company wrote on Friday, “With the direction of the Sun, the orientation of solar panels, and extremely cold temperatures in the pit, is not expected to recharge Ethena from spontaneous machines,” the company wrote on Friday. “Mission has concluded and teams continue to assess the data collected throughout the mission.”
The company’s stock fell over 24 percent since the inauguration of trading on Friday after announcing updates around EST (1430 UTC) at 9:30 AM. Intuitive machines, which trades on NASDAQ under Lunr, lost approximately $ 3 per share in the price, going from $ $ 11.26 to $ 8.50 from $ 8.50 (1900 UTC) to $ 8.50 on Thursday.
During a press conference at Johnson Space Center on Thursday, Steve Altemus, CEO of spontaneous machines, said he was sorting through conflicting information, making it difficult to determine the orientation of the lander on the surface of the moon. He said that the inertia measurement unit (IMU) on the lander gave an indication that it was in its favor, but said he wanted to see an image to help to confirm.
Altemus said on Thursday, “I would like to get a picture, however, where the antennas are indicated, where the engine bell is indicated, where there are solar panels, where we can detect a power profile.” “We know that we can communicate with the payload. We can talk to them and close them. Therefore, if we can detect orientation properly with imagery, we can develop a power profile, such as I said, and then a series of priorities in science and technology list may result in results in a series of preferences that will allow us to capture some mission objectives. ,
With her statement on Friday, machines with intuitive knowledge were able to release an image from the lander, which confirmed that Athena was on her side.
“After landing, the Mission Controller was able to accelerate several programs and payload milestones, including NASA’s Prime -1 suite, before the lander’s battery decreased,” said spontaneous machines.
However, due to the orientation of the lander, the trident drill was not able to penetrate the lunar surface and bring the samples studied by the MSOLO mass spectrometer.
NASA had several pieces of funds invested in the mission. In addition to $ 62.5 million, it was paid to give the Moon a prime -1 suit, the agency gave two “tipping points” prizes to Nokia and Sahaj Knowledge Machines.
Nokia received $ 14.1 million to demonstrate 4G/LTE technology on the lunar surface and got $ 41.6 million to intuitive machines, which is to help develop a rocket-profiled micro Nova Hopper, named Grace.
The agency did not release a statement on the mission as 3 pm on Friday (2000 UTC).
The IM-2 dubbed the Mission, NASA’s commercial lunar payload services (CLPS) program as part of the program was launched on 26 February on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Spontaneous machines are already progressing to their third mission for CLP, which is scheduled to be launched in the late 2025 or early 2026.
Some data went on
One of the customers of the IM-2 mission, Lunar Outpost confirmed on its social media that Ethena’s landing orientation stopped the deployment of its mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP) Rover. Lunar Outpost said the data collected confirmed that “MAPP survived the attempt of landing and went to the lunar surface and achieved the objectives of our mission, it was given the opportunity.”
“We look forward to our upcoming missions – including the discovery of Rainer Gama (Chandra Yatra 2), go back to the Moon’s south pole (lunar journey 3), and the first Australian rover mission for the moon (lunar journey 4) is,” said Chandra Outpost. “Our abilities are clearly displayed in space, we look forward to what our mobility system can achieve.”
None of other customers have issued a statement on the health of their respective payloads as publishing this story.
