Like Homer's Ulysses, the lunatic Odysseus seems to resist the siren song, a prelude to the ultimate destiny.
Odie, nickname of this spacecraft, landed on the Moon last week and closed a pause of more than half a century without United States missions to the star that this country set foot on before anyone else.
The landing of this module by the private company Intuitive Machines, based in Houston, had its problems. He stumbled over his feet and landed on his side. That position obstructed part of its antennas, while its solar panels were far from being in an ideal position to generate energy from the sun.
The controllers feared the worst and hurriedly tried to collect as much data as possible before nightfall in that region of the Moon's south pole, unexplored territory of high value since it is assumed that there is ice, at which time Odysseus She was considered dead and fell into silence.
However, on Wednesday he still sent photographs, his selfies. By collecting additional telemetry data, the team of experts determined that the position she was in was not so paralyzing.
In fact, Steve Altemus, executive director of the company, stressed at a press conference the hope that the ship will be operational again in about three weeks, when the Sun returns and with its valuable rays can bring the lander back to life.
“We have carried out a very successful task up to this point and we hope to reach the end of the mission as planned,” Altemus stressed.
“It's just an incredible testament to how robust and beastly this little spacecraft is,” he said. Odysseus is the size of a telephone booth. NASA, the space agency of the United States Government, collaborates in this project, which has contributed more than 100 million and has placed various instruments for research. Despite the incidents during its landing on the moon and the fact that night has already fallen in that area, the ship continued transmitting valuable information on Wednesday.
Among these notable elements were stunning new images of Odysseus that captured the moment immediately after the spacecraft made its harrowing and historic landing on the lunar surface.
In the media appearance, Intuitive Machines and NASA leaders revealed that Odysseus was delivering data from the space agency's six instruments, as well as payloads from commercial companies, including a dual-camera observatory from the company Canadensys Aeroespacial, based in Toronto.
Many of the devices on board were designed to collect information when the ship was in transit to the Moon and at the crucial moment of descent to the surface.
“The main objective was to gently position our equipment so that it could collect information once the landing had occurred, and this has gone well,” said Joel Kearns, associate administrator for exploitation at NASA. One of these space agency tools is designed to study the reaction of the lunar terrain to the Odysseus landing. Both this and the study of ice are focused on the project of taking humans to the Moon, as a destination and also as a supply port to undertake the route to Mars.
