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An internal congressional memo viewed by TechCrunch casts strong doubt on Rocket Lab’s claim that its Neutron rocket will be ready for launch in time to meet a crucial contract deadline from the Space Force.
This week in space historyOn March 6, 2009, the Kepler space telescope lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
My stomach is still in knots from the Intuitive Machines landing livestream.
I think it’s fair to say that the words of Tim Crain, Intuitive Machines’ CTO, will go down in history: “We’re not dead yet.”Very metal.
Intuitive Machines’ first lander, called Odysseus, softly touched down on the south pole region of the moon around 5:23 p.m. Central Time on Thursday, bringing to a close an eight-day journey and years of hard work.
There was a brief period after landing when mission controllers waited to reestablish communications with the spacecraft.
The mission is also a huge success for NASA, which paid Intuitive Machines around $118 million to deliver six scientific and research payloads, under a program called Commercial Lunar Payload Services.
My stomach is still in knots from the Intuitive Machines landing livestream.
I think it’s fair to say that the words of Tim Crain, Intuitive Machines’ CTO, will go down in history: “We’re not dead yet.”Very metal.
Intuitive Machines’ first lander, called Odysseus, softly touched down on the south pole region of the moon around 5:23 p.m. Central Time on Thursday, bringing to a close an eight-day journey and years of hard work.
There was a brief period after landing when mission controllers waited to reestablish communications with the spacecraft.
The mission is also a huge success for NASA, which paid Intuitive Machines around $118 million to deliver six scientific and research payloads, under a program called Commercial Lunar Payload Services.
Using a small model of the lander, Altemus demonstrated how engineers believe the spacecraft, called Odysseus, made its descent given the most recent telemetry data.
“The vehicle is stable near or at our intended landing site,” Altemus said.
Part of the reason for that is because the onboard camera, an instrument called EagleCam, was powered down during landing.
The company originally thought Odysseus was actually upright, but Altemus said that was based on “stale” telemetry data.
Much of the mission’s success came down to very quick thinking by Intuitive Machines’ mission controllers — and just a stroke of very good luck.
