Athena reached a dark crorer where the temperature minus 280 ° F

the Athena The spacecraft is not exactly flying blind as the lunar face approaches a week ago. The board software makes a reliable job to identify adjacent craters, even with elongated shadows of the land. However, the Altimeter of Lander has failed.

So Athena Knowing which relative is this face of the moon, the lander does not know how long it is on top of the face.

A valuable detail, that. As a result, the private built spacecraft struck the lunar face on a plate, which is set, and begins to skip over. As it did, the lander rotates at least once or twice before stopping a small, stopped crater.

“Landing is like sliding on the second basis,” Steve Altemus, chief executive excuses of intuitive machines, building the owner’s owner.

Cold and lonely

This is a busy and tiring week for a company’s chief trying to help the development of an economic lunar. Expectations are high for this, the company’s second test landing after this Odysseus The vehicle becomes the first private spacecraft that makes a soft landing of the moon, last year, before expiration.

In some way, this mission is more disappointing. Because Athena Skidded across the lunar face, it raises the regolith. To stop stopping, some of this material blows solar panels – is in a sub-optimal location on its side. The electric reserves in spacecraft, therefore, limited. Almost immediately, the team of intuitive machines know their spacecraft dying.

“We know that we have a slightly poisoned bamboo, and the temperature is very cold,” said Altemus. “The arrays of the solar regolith over them, and they have not charged, teaching, enough to give us adequate power to prevent heaters to remain warm.”