Within a small control room, during the middle of the local time in Texas on Thursday, about a dozen white engineers began to worry at a space start called intuitive machines. Their spacecraft, a landler named Aitina, was starting his last descent from a lunar level.
Similarly, a year has passed since a year after the company’s first attempt to land on the moon with Odisius. Due to difficulties in the laser range of this spacecraft, it slipped into the moon’s surface and fell.
So the engineers of intuitive machines checked, and re -checked the laser -based ultimators on Ethana. When the Lander went down about 30 km of lunar surface, he re -experienced the range Finders. The concern is that there was some noise in the readings when the laser bounced off the moon. However, engineers had the reason to believe that, maybe, will improve with the spacecraft closer to the surface.
Tim Crane, Chief Technology Officer of Duper Machines, then told reporters, “We hoped that the noise indicators would improve.”
This didn’t happen. The noise remained. And likewise, to some extent, Aitina went under the blindness of the moon. Liquid oxygen and methane -based spacecraft propulsion system, and designed at home, worked beautifully. But at the last minute, the spacecraft did not know where it was compared to the surface.
Probably lying on the side of
Beyond, the crane and the rest of the company, including its chief executive Steve Ultimus, in particular couldn’t say what happened. After the departure of Ayatina, engineers can talk to the spacecraft under mission control, and they managed to create some strength from its solar ranks. But especially where it was, or how it fell on the ground, they could not say after a few hours.
Based on reading from the internal measurement unit inside the vehicle, it is most likely that Etina is lying towards it. Last year, the same fate met Odisis, when he hit the moon, broke one leg, and fell.