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thewayneThe failure has been discovered: its altimeter failed! That's kind of bad when you're trying to land a rocket.
They tried to coopt a NASA experiment that was on-board, but it was only partially successful. The lander believed that "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."
Whoops! The hard hit and the lateral skid caused one of the landing legs to snap, which resulted on its tipping over on its side. Still, as they say when landing aircraft, any landing you can walk away from!
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/it-turns-out-that-odysseus-landed-on-the-moon-without-any-altimetry-data/
The other news is that the Japanese lander, SLIM, woke up after a lunar night! Keep in mind that the moon alternates between extremely hot and extremely cold in its day/night cycle. The night is -133c, or -208f! Pretty darn brisk! These probes aren't typically designed to handle that level of cold. The Russian probes that did had radioactive thermal generators and a clamshell covering so they could turtle-up when it got dark and hunker down, then open up again when it warmed up. SLIM? Not so much. Like the Indian probe, it was designed for a short life in the sun, then they expected it to die. The Indian probe did not survive the cold. But apparently SLIM did!
After the night cycle ended, they sent a ping to the probe and it responded! While the rovers it dispersed are probably dead, the lander itself has cameras and sent back some pix. They powered it down to standby as it's pretty hot right now (over 200f!) but the fact that it survived and they will still get some data from it is pretty awesome.
It will be interesting to see how many day/night cycles it will survive. They must have have parts of it built by Timex and Toyota. ;-)
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/26/world/japan-moon-sniper-slim-wakes-up-images-scn/index.html
They tried to coopt a NASA experiment that was on-board, but it was only partially successful. The lander believed that "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."
Whoops! The hard hit and the lateral skid caused one of the landing legs to snap, which resulted on its tipping over on its side. Still, as they say when landing aircraft, any landing you can walk away from!
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/it-turns-out-that-odysseus-landed-on-the-moon-without-any-altimetry-data/
The other news is that the Japanese lander, SLIM, woke up after a lunar night! Keep in mind that the moon alternates between extremely hot and extremely cold in its day/night cycle. The night is -133c, or -208f! Pretty darn brisk! These probes aren't typically designed to handle that level of cold. The Russian probes that did had radioactive thermal generators and a clamshell covering so they could turtle-up when it got dark and hunker down, then open up again when it warmed up. SLIM? Not so much. Like the Indian probe, it was designed for a short life in the sun, then they expected it to die. The Indian probe did not survive the cold. But apparently SLIM did!
After the night cycle ended, they sent a ping to the probe and it responded! While the rovers it dispersed are probably dead, the lander itself has cameras and sent back some pix. They powered it down to standby as it's pretty hot right now (over 200f!) but the fact that it survived and they will still get some data from it is pretty awesome.
It will be interesting to see how many day/night cycles it will survive. They must have have parts of it built by Timex and Toyota. ;-)
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/26/world/japan-moon-sniper-slim-wakes-up-images-scn/index.html
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Date: 2024-02-29 01:06 am (UTC)And BRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hugs, Jon
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Date: 2024-02-29 01:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-29 06:36 am (UTC)That said, kudos to successful landings, and to the JAXA folks that built something that could thumb its nose at the lunar night, even if unintentionally.