Odysseus sends moon landing photos home as time runs out

Odysseus, the American robotic spacecraft that landed on the moon last week, will likely die in the coming day.

Communication with the overturned lander remains limited and will end when sunlight no longer shines on its solar panels, Intuitive Machines, the Houston-based company that built and operates Odysseus, said Monday morning.

The company has also released images taken by the spacecraft during its descent, but none yet of the surface.

Odysseus is the first American spacecraft to land on the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972, and the first private spacecraft to ever successfully land there in one piece. However, during landing on Thursday evening, the approximately 4.5 meter long lander appeared to have traveled faster than planned and ultimately fell on its side.

As a result, the antennas are not pointed toward Earth, significantly slowing the speed at which data can be returned. While some of Odysseus’ solar panels were initially bathed in sunlight, they will soon be in shadow as the sun moves across the sky. That will starve the spacecraft of energy, and the batteries will die.

“Flight controllers plan to collect data until the lander’s solar panels are no longer exposed to light,” says Intuitive Machines posted on X. “Based on the positioning of the Earth and moon, we believe flight controllers will continue to communicate with Odysseus until Tuesday morning.”

Flight controllers now know exactly where Odysseus is on the moon. On Saturday, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter took a photo as it flew over the landing site, revealing a speck that was not there in an earlier image the orbiter had taken of the area.

Odysseus landed within about a mile of his intended landing site – with higher precision than most previous landers. That feat was even more impressive because Intuitive Machines engineers had to patch the spacecraft’s software to bypass malfunctioning lasers that were supposed to track the spacecraft’s altitude.

Intuitive Machines said Odysseus was also able to detect nine safe landing sites in the Antarctic region, information that could be useful for future missions as NASA and other space agencies want to explore that region. Frozen water in the shadows of craters could one day provide crucial resources for astronauts there.

As Odysseus faded away, another lunar lander unexpectedly came back to life. JAXA, the Japanese space agency, reported Monday that its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, revived. SLIM successfully landed on the moon in January. Due to the failure of one of the two engines, it moved sideways upon landing and, like Odysseus, tilted in an unexpected direction with the solar panels in the shade.

SLIM came to life a few days later when sunlight hit some panels, but fell asleep again as the two-week moon night descended. The spacecraft was not designed to survive the frigid temperatures, which dropped below -200 degrees Fahrenheit.

But now that the sun was back in the sky, SLIM’s solar panels generated enough energy to charge the batteries and reconnect with the earth. Temperatures were so high that communications ended shortly afterwards, JAXA said.

However, JAXA said it planned to resume SLIM scientific surveys of the surrounding terrain once temperatures drop.