Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
theguardian.com
Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
1–10 of 360 posts
Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
#2One 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.
Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
#3Jesus. 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.
Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
#4One 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.
maybe make it like a hamster ball.
edit: just realized my own stupidity, a ball would be very hard to land..
Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
#5Jesus. 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 took up an appreciable percentage of the GDP… this is a small startup with a fraction of the funding. Firefly landed successfully, but they are bigger.
This is a hardware rich, inexpensive program, and they could fly probably 100 missions for the cost of one NASA old style mission.
Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
#6One 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.
> One similarly structured craft (thin and tall) reached the Moon a year ago, and also eventually toppled.
Presumably it's that shape to fit in the fairing of a Falcon 9?
Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
#7Damn... gotta take a playbook out of MIB2 have it stand itself up after landing
A ball design too, rolls over and stands up
Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
#8Jesus. 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.
Note that Firefly succeeded at this just a few days ago.
Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
#9One 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.
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?
Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
#10One 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.
maybe make it like a hamster ball. edit: just realized my own stupidity, a ball would be very hard to land..
A mars lander was like that but air bags