Intuitive Machine’s Odysseus lander, the first private lunar lander to successfully touch down on the Moon and the first US lander in more than 50 years, has beamed back its first images from the region of the lunar south pole.

Though the Odysseus lander has made history, its mission will unfortunately be cut short because it touched down in a sideways position. 

The spacecraft’s awkward landing serves as yet another reminder that landing on the lunar surface is an incredibly challenging undertaking, and it highlights the accomplishments of other successful missions that came before. 

Odysseus’ sideways landing update

On Thursday, February 22, Houston-based Intuitive Machines made history by successfully becoming the first private company to land on the Moon with its IM-1 mission.

Celebrations were slightly tarnished, though, by complications before and after the landing took place. The Odysseus lander may have touched down in one piece, but it wasn’t a perfect landing. 

This week, on Monday, February 26, Intuitive Machines announced on its website that Odysseus is still communicating with ground control despite having landed in a sideways position. 

That awkward landing accounts for the radio silence on Intuitive Machine’s webcast when Odysseus was first expected to have landed – the spacecraft’s awkward positioning meant it wasn’t immediately able to phone home. 

Unfortunately, it also means the Odysseus mission will be shortened from an expected seven to 10 days to about five. In its latest update, the company announced that it believes “flight controllers will continue to communicate with Odysseus until Tuesday morning”. 

In more positive news, though, Odysseus has returned two images from the Moon. One was captured as the spacecraft approached its landing site. The other shows a close-up of the lunar surface. 

Odysseus captured the first image from the lunar surface. Source: Intuitive Machines / X.

Nasa has also shared an image of the private lunar lander captured by its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been orbiting the Moon at 90km since 2009. 

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter image of Odysseus. Source: NASA / GSFC / Arizona State University.

On social media platform X, Intuitive Machines explained that “images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera team confirmed Odysseus completed its landing at 80.13°S and 1.44°E at a 2579 m elevation. After traveling more than 600,000 miles, Odysseus landed within 1.5km of its intended Malapert A landing site, using a contingent laser range-finding system patched hours before landing.”

Racing to the lunar south pole

The fact that Odysseus’ mission time might be cut in half is another reminder of how difficult it is to land on the Moon. 

Russia’s Luna-25 mission and the US private Peregrine Mission One recently failed to land on the Moon. Japan’s SLIM did make it, but it also landed on its nose, reducing its capacity to capture sunlight with its solar panels.

India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission was the first to successfully perform a soft landing near the lunar south pole last year, and it did so on a remarkably low budget of $75m.

Just a couple hours before Odysseus touched down, Intuitive Machines engineers were called into action when the spacecraft’s laser rangefinders stopped working. 

When the instruments, designed to tell the spacecraft where it is about the lunar surface, stopped functioning, the team had to quickly repurpose one of the lander’s 12 payloads to act as a GPS.

The Navigation Doppler Lidar (NDL) for Precise Velocity and Range Sensing aboard Odysseus features laser software that the Intuitive Machines team was able to use as a backup for navigation. 

Due to this complication, Intuitive Machines decided against deploying its EagleCam before landing, which accounts for the underwhelming quality of the company’s shared images. The images available now were captured by a small camera on the starboard aft-side of the lander.  

A picture captured by Odysseus as it approached its landing site. Source: Intuitive Machines / X.

According to Intuitive Machines, the image above was captured by Odysseus “approximately 35 seconds after pitching over during its approach to the landing site”.

Despite those frustrations, Intuitive Machine’s IM-1 mission will still conduct science operations in the coming days. Moreover, the company confirmed that Odysseus represents “the furthest south any vehicle has been able to land on the Moon and establish communication with ground controllers”. 

This is an important achievement, as the world’s biggest space powers race to chart the lunar south pole region to build permanent Moon colonies using the abundant water ice believed to reside in the region’s shadowed craters.