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Athena landed in a dark crater where the temperature was -280° F / -173° C

arstechnica.com

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Re: Athena landed in a dark crater where the temperature was -280° F / -173° C

#231

Post by literalAardvark »

nomel wrote: post #127
sandworm101 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. SpaceX has landed on prepared surfaces, concrete pads on land or on large barges. They literally have a big X to mark the target. Let's see them land on some random beach, an uneven surface that may or may not subside. But that is still peanuts comparted to the moon's surface.

For any of these landings, it's a problem of 3d positional/velocity precision . SpaceX has prove that they can reliably land on a target, usually within meters, with negligibly delta velocity on contact. In other words, they've proven they have the control systems in place for placing a craft at a precise location, with a precise velocity. What requirement do you see outside of this that are far outside of placement…

> 3d positional/velocity precision. SpaceX has prove that they can reliably land on a target, usually within meters

On Earth, which has GPS. On a very highly engineered landing surface.

Landing on inertial guidance on soft regolith is a whole different ballgame.

Re: Athena landed in a dark crater where the temperature was -280° F / -173° C

#232

Post by inamberclad »

Aspos wrote: post #83
ceejayoz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noise at 30km altitude probably points more towards a sensor issue than dust.

May it be that laser bounced off exhaust plume?

Laser is angled outwards at approx 45 degrees, I think it's well away from the exhaust plume.

Re: Athena landed in a dark crater where the temperature was -280° F / -173° C

#233

Post by inamberclad »

Welp, I worked on this one. Specifically, I worked on the laser rangefinders which are under so much scrutiny. I no longer work at Intuitive Machines, but I'm certainly interested in finding out what happened to the lasers this time.

Re: Athena landed in a dark crater where the temperature was -280° F / -173° C

#234

Post by adastra22 »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #219
ricardobeat wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you multiply every critical component by 3x there will be no room left for anything else.

2n + 1 is a basic minimum amount of redundancy for anything critical in a high-value space mission.

This isn't a high-value space mission.

Re: Athena landed in a dark crater where the temperature was -280° F / -173° C

#235

Post by adastra22 »

bilekas wrote: post #217
lionkor wrote: post #188

the altimeter? Surely you would put three on there?

If I’m not mistaken there are three on commercial aircraft.. Seems like the bare minimum for a lunar lander .. I can’t imagine they’re THAT heavy

Every gram of weight is directly trading off payload.

Re: Athena landed in a dark crater where the temperature was -280° F / -173° C

#236

Post by wruza »

Tyr42 wrote: post #207
wruza wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just in case, I’m using my own violentmonkey scripts rather than hoping for extensions, and everyone can do that too (now only on firefox, I guess, and maybe brave). For example, I remove &t= from urls that youtube added recently in addition to regular watch position restoration. This broke it for me and they don’t seem to plan a revert.

That is also used if you want to share a video at a particular timestamp with someone. E.g. check this out it happens 40s in. YouTube.com....&t=40s

A little downside, yeah, but these scripts can be easily toggled. What can't be easily done is finding my last timestamp in a 5h long vod when &t-in-history screws it up.

Re: Athena landed in a dark crater where the temperature was -280° F / -173° C

#237

Post by pclmulqdq »

adastra22 wrote: post #234
pclmulqdq wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2n + 1 is a basic minimum amount of redundancy for anything critical in a high-value space mission.

This isn't a high-value space mission.

The price of a ride to the moon alone would make this "high-value." Cubesats are an example of when you can get away with no redundancy, but this is not a cubesat.

Re: Athena landed in a dark crater where the temperature was -280° F / -173° C

#238

Post by adastra22 »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #237
adastra22 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a high-value space mission.

The price of a ride to the moon alone would make this "high-value." Cubesats are an example of when you can get away with no redundancy, but this is not a cubesat.

This is best compared to being a lunar landing cubesat. IM is an order of magnitude cheaper than a comparable NASA lander. Cheap is the point, and cheap carries with it some concessions to risk.

Re: Athena landed in a dark crater where the temperature was -280° F / -173° C

#239

Post by pclmulqdq »

adastra22 wrote: post #238
pclmulqdq wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price of a ride to the moon alone would make this "high-value." Cubesats are an example of when you can get away with no redundancy, but this is not a cubesat.

This is best compared to being a lunar landing cubesat. IM is an order of magnitude cheaper than a comparable NASA lander. Cheap is the point, and cheap carries with it some concessions to risk.

$1M was the amount they spent on the lander. If I recall correctly, they got a ride to the moon for free. Delivering that amount of mass to the moon is worth O($10M). It seems incentives were not properly aligned for this group.

I should also point out that you can fly a scientific mission on a 1U cubesat for ~$100k all in (including launch cost), which puts it in a very different regime.

Re: Athena landed in a dark crater where the temperature was -280° F / -173° C

#240

Post by yieldcrv »

inamberclad wrote: post #233

Welp, I worked on this one. Specifically, I worked on the laser rangefinders which are under so much scrutiny. I no longer work at Intuitive Machines, but I'm certainly interested in finding out what happened to the lasers this time.

some of the comments here are suggesting the lander chose that spot, as opposed to crashing and skidding across the surface before settling in the spot purely due to inertia, what's the merit to that?
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