They are rebooting the ground transmitter.
3:33 PST Signs of life. Tracking a return signal.
Successful Landing confirmed at about 3:35 PST
Flight controllers chose to exercise an additional orbit before starting the IM-1 Mission landing sequence. The new anticipated landing time is 1724 CST.
We expect the landing stream to start on the IM-1 web page and NASA TV at 1600 CST. The content on both streams is identical.…— Intuitive Machines (@Int_Machines) February 22, 2024
If the robotic explorer is successful, it will be the first US-made spacecraft to touch down on the moon in five decades.
CEO Stephen Altemus estimates it has about an 80% chance of safely landing on the moon.
It will land at the South Pole with science experiments.
They worked with NASA to identify the new landing site to support the Artemis lunar exploration campaign. NASA Artemis plans to land crewed missions near the south pole as soon as 2025 where astronauts can access potential water ice deposits.
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What can I say, it’s about time! I’ve long been a fan of private industry taking a lead in space tech. development. W/NASA being (among others) a customer. Missions can happen faster and cheaper. Sometimes unplanned things happen, but that can happen regardless. I’m surprised they did not have a “hardwired” back-up for the primary LIDAR navigation system.
That they were able to “appropriate” an experiment to deal w/this primary failure was very creative, and nerve racking. Of course, congratulations to all.
It was a rather disappointing event with the lack of actual video stream. You would think there would have been video footage with a camera view facing the aft side towards the ground on the lander. The perception of the event lends to the actual importance of the event. Watching some people sitting at computer terminals is not inspiring.
Public support is vital to the space program to encourage political votes in Congress. Remember, this is a NASA funded project. It is what it is.
Congrats to them, great achievement, but I can’t say I’m a fan of it’s measly 1 week life span.
If I spent 118 million…I’d want more then 1 week worth of science out of it.
Well it is solar powered and daytime is only two weeks long so there’s that.
Well, it apparently landed successfully, anyway. Just pointing in the wrong direction, so they’re having trouble establishing high bandwidth radio contact.