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Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

theguardian.com

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Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#21

Post by yieldcrv »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #11
nine_k wrote: post #2

One similarly structured craft (thin and tall) reached the Moon a year ago, and also eventually toppled. Maybe next missions will feature less tower-shaped designs and more crab-shaped designs, at least during the landing phase.

The craft that tipped over last year (Odysseus) was also made by Intuitive Machines (IM). Firefly's Blue Ghost landed on the moon last week without tipping over, proving that a modern commercial company can do it. Kind of embarrassing for IM which is 0 for 2. I'm sure there are all kinds of reasons/excuses for why IM's landers fell over and I'm sure their mission profiles are different from Firefly's, but from a high…

> I'm sure senior leaders at NASA are reconsidering giving any new contracts to IM.

at NASA, and DOGE, when they catch wind of it

bagholders on reddit trying to understand the 50% drop have not been open to anything rational that explains the 50% drop

so far I've gotten "You are blinded by dumb hate." for pointing out that $LUNR's unintuitive machines getting contracts from Nasa are their only business plan, as if this is a partisan thing

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#22

Post by bell-cot »

> Athena, a probe launched by [...] Intuitive Machines (IM) last month, touched down about 250 miles from its intended landing site near the moon’s south pole on Thursday. Initially at least, it was generating some power and sending information to Earth as engineers worked to make sense of data showing an “incorrect attitude”.

> On Friday, however, IM declared Athena dead.

250 miles off-course, and their second flop in a row. I'd certainly cross them off the Approved Vendor list.

About that "gotta be tall & tippy to fit inside the Falcon's payload fairing" idea. No, it does not. The payload fairing was jettisoned ~1/4M miles before Athena got to the moon. So plenty of time for the lander to deploy some folded-up "spider legs" landing gear, making "land and fall over" virtually impossible.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#23

Post by aylmao »

mikeyouse wrote: post #13

Kind of passed over in the discussion of the science and toppling - but did they give any idea why it landed 250 miles from its intended landing site? Seems like a really large error?

Really funny spin from their PR department too:

> “the most southernmost lunar landing and surface operations ever achieved”.

> “This area has been avoided due to its rugged terrain and Intuitive Machines believes the insights and achievements from IM-2 will open this region for further space exploration.”

I wonder if this 250 mile error is why they ended so far south in the first place.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#24

Post by sho_hn »

nine_k wrote: post #2

One similarly structured craft (thin and tall) reached the Moon a year ago, and also eventually toppled. Maybe next missions will feature less tower-shaped designs and more crab-shaped designs, at least during the landing phase.

Which gives me great amusement about the current human spaceflight plan to land upright Starship on the moon, and lower astronauts from the top of what is effectively a tower-like 13-story building (52.1m without landing legs, at 9m tube width) using some kind of elevator solution. To put things into perspective, this is roughly the same height as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and with landing legs extended probably about the same width as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_HLS#/media/File:HLS_S...

https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasa-astronauts-test-spac...

Sure, there's lots of details to consider, e.g. center of gravity, overall weight, maximum possible duration to hover and ability to accurately steer and pick your landing spot. But the inherent difficulty in "how do you not topple over" is definitely there, and it's clear the proposed Starship lander will have to outperform these IM landers significantly.

That said, if you want to scale out payload to the surface I guess you have to (which however eats into your center of gravity advantages from having lots of engines at the bottom, too).

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#25

Post by lupusreal »

carabiner wrote: post #3

Jesus. It really is that hard. With all the bajillion in extra compute and simulation time from Apollo era, we can't do hard things anymore. We don't know how.

Landers on the Moon is pre-Apollo in fact, by about three years. The Soviet's Luna 9 landed on the Moon in February of 1966, and America's Surveyor 1 in June.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#26

Post by joeevans1000 »

Not being critical here, just a question from my curious naivety (lunar exploration is hard): these landers seem spindly and unforgiving, landing-wise. Are there bouncy ball type craft that could be made, or something that can reorient or push itself up after landing? I have a vague memory of something like that being used on Mars.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#27

Post by rolph »

aylmao wrote: post #20
tekla wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.intuitivemachines.com/post/intuitive-machines-im... Look at the lander. Pray tell, if you want it shorter, where is everything supposed to go?

It could be two landers, one stacked on top of the other for takeoff, but separate for landing EDIT: or a horizontal lander, packed on it's side for takeoff. I'm sure it's more complicated than that, but landing something this tall seems quite complicated too in the first place.

go bigger this could be a pancake stack that separates into a swarm of puck like units according to some sequence

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#28

Post by SoftTalker »

carabiner wrote: post #3

Jesus. It really is that hard. With all the bajillion in extra compute and simulation time from Apollo era, we can't do hard things anymore. We don't know how.

Apollo landers had human brains operating them. We're not quite there yet with technology.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#29

Post by Liftyee »

joeevans1000 wrote: post #26

Not being critical here, just a question from my curious naivety (lunar exploration is hard): these landers seem spindly and unforgiving, landing-wise. Are there bouncy ball type craft that could be made, or something that can reorient or push itself up after landing? I have a vague memory of something like that being used on Mars.

There are indeed craft like that. The NASA Pathfinder probe and MER rovers (all to Mars) are probably what you're thinking of.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#30

Post by ok_dad »

yieldcrv wrote: post #21
parsimo2010 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The craft that tipped over last year (Odysseus) was also made by Intuitive Machines (IM). Firefly's Blue Ghost landed on the moon last week without tipping over, proving that a modern commercial company can do it. Kind of embarrassing for IM which is 0 for 2. I'm sure there are all kinds of reasons/excuses for why IM's landers fell over and I'm sure their mission profiles are different from Firefly's, but from a high…

> I'm sure senior leaders at NASA are reconsidering giving any new contracts to IM. at NASA, and DOGE, when they catch wind of it bagholders on reddit trying to understand the 50% drop have not been open to anything rational that explains the 50% drop so far I've gotten "You are blinded by dumb hate." for pointing out that $LUNR's unintuitive machines getting contracts from Nasa are their only business plan, as if th…

Shit, NASA does space stuff, it fails sometimes! Do we want to only fund things we know to be 100% easy to do? And don't fucking tell me, "we already landed on the moon once, how hard can it be?" because this shit is really fucking hard and takes lots of cash and a lot of what apppears to be "waste" or "failure" on a first order approximation, but in reality is actually "learned knowledge".

I can't believe people think they're going to "make america great again" by cutting funding for all the stuff that makes America an economic, cultural, and academic powerhouse.

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