February 26th, 2024
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Caught on camera! The troubled Intuitive Machines IM-1 Nova-C Moon lander, known as Odysseus, touched down on the Moon Thursday, February 22. The arrow indicates the craft’s location. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter’s (LRO) powerful camera system, the LROC, spotted Odysseus, within a degraded one-kilometer diameter crater “where the local terrain is sloped at a sporty […]
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Mum’s the word from Intuitive Machines regarding their recently landed Odysseus Moon craft. Meanwhile, that’s not the case from an Embry‑Riddle team that’s also working around the clock, all in preparation for ejecting their EagleCam from the apparently tipped over lunar lander. While no go-ahead time has been issued, the device once launched from Odysseus […]
China has officially named the vehicles that will support that country’s human exploration of the Moon. A three-seater spacecraft is called “Mengzhou” (Dream Vessel) and the lunar lander is named “Lanyue” (Embracing the Moon), in English translation. Lanyue first appeared in a poem written by the late Chairman Mao Zedong in 1965, noted the China […]
The NASA Curiosity Mars rover at Gale crater is now performing Sol 4107 tasks. In a report by Natalie Moore, a mission operations specialist at Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, California, a recent drive by Curiosity was successful. “It was quickly determined our wheels were stable enough to unstow the arm and put […]
The Intuitive Machines Odysseus lunar lander carries precursor instruments of the International Lunar Observatory Association (ILOA Hawai’i), dedicated to a long-term goal of permanent astronomy from the Moon. While the lander is apparently tipped over, there are two ILO-X precursor imagers mounted near the top of the lander. Team members of the ILOA remain hopeful […]
The Intuitive Machines Moon lander carried EagleCam, a camera system from Embry‑Riddle’s Space Technologies Lab, that was to be ejected from the lander on approach to the Moon. EagleCam was billed and able to capture the first-ever third-person picture of a spacecraft making an extraterrestrial landing. Power down New information from Troy Henderson, faculty lead […]
The prolonged wait for the true status of the private Moon lander, Odysseus, is indeed a nail-bitter blended in with the sounds of silence According to Intuitive Machines, the status of the recent arrival on the Moon is that the lander is “alive and well.” At this posting, no surface imagery has been released. Reportedly, […]
It is showtime for the commercial Odysseus Moon lander, ready to attempt later today a touchdown on the lunar terrain. Following lunar orbit insertion on February 21st, Intuitive Machines notes its lander is in excellent shape for Odysseus’ “hardest challenge yet” – an expected 1630 Central Standard Time (5:30 […]
The European Space Agency has issued what may be the final update prior to the uncontrolled fiery finale and destruction of the European ERS-2 spacecraft. Using data acquired in the last few hours, ESA’s Space Debris Office predicts that the reentry of ESA’s ERS-2 satellite will take place today, on Feb. 21 […]
A European Space Agency spacecraft is making an uncontrolled nosedive into Earth’s atmosphere – with elements of the 2.3-ton spent satellite likely to survive the plunge into purgatory. The exact time and place above Earth that the radar-scanning ESA European Remote Sensing (ERS-2) augers in is unknown, but a new prediction of the spacecraft’s demise […]
