Last Monday, the spacecraft made its “nail-biting” descent to the moon, becoming the first privately owned lander to land there and the first from the United States since 1972.
Odysseus was originally scheduled to live between seven and ten days, but it is now scheduled to end five days after landing on its side in the moon, and it is unclear how much scientific data may be lost in the process.
The probe’s launch partner, Intuitive Machines, acknowledged that the probe’s shorter lifespan might have been caused by human error and testing decisions made in the past.
The chief of navigation systems at the business, Mike Hansen, stated, “There were certainly things we could’ve done to test it and actually fire it.”
“They would’ve been very time-consuming and very costly.”
