SpaceX Lunar Lander

[Slim]

https://www.space.com/spacex-launch-im-1-private-moon-landing-mission

Launched early this morning and due to touch down near the Moon's south pole in a week's time - if successful, this will be the first time a lander has been deployed on the Moon by a private company.

[Thenop]

It feels weird not getting these messages originate from NASA or Esa.
Modern times eh.

[David L]

Boo....Elon Musk....bad man! 

[Slim]

Odysseus passes the near side of the Moon yesterday. Should land near the Lunar South Pole at about 11:24pm UK time tonight. Will be streamed on NASA TV.

[Slim]

It's not going too well. Communication with the lander lost. It does have a fault detection system that will power-cycle the onboard transmitter / receivers after comms are down for 15 mins.

Apparently a faint signal is being received from the high gain antenna. I wonder if it's misaligned due to the lander being on its side? It's confirmed on the surface of the Moon at least.

[Slim]

https://edition.cnn.com/us/live-news/nasa-odysseus-moon-landing-intuitive-machines-scn/index.html

Odysseus has now officially made history with its successful lunar touchdown — and none of it could have happened without some fast work from engineers on the ground and a breath-catching save from a NASA payload.

Before descent, Intuitive Machines, which developed the Odysseus lunar lander, revealed crucial pieces of the vehicle's navigation equipment were not working.

Fortunately, NASA — which considers itself one of many customers on this mission — had an experimental instrument already on board Odysseus that could be swapped in to make up for the malfunctioning equipment.

Engineers were able to bypass Odysseus' broken pieces and land using two lasers that are part of NASA's Navigation Doppler Lidar, or NDL, payload.

[Matt2112]

The precision of the thinking and engineering involved in these things never fails to astound me.

[pxr5]

The precision of the thinking and engineering involved in these things never fails to astound me.

Systems Engineering  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_engineering  It was my job -  as a Senior Systems Engineer before I retired. It's a fascinating area to work in.

[Slim]

That's my job title as well, funnily enough. Senior Systems Engineer. In my case, only operating systems and similar.

[pxr5]

That's my job title as well, funnily enough. Senior Systems Engineer. In my case, only operating systems and similar.

Mine was mainly requirements management, testing and logistics.

[Slim]

Very thorough account of what happened by Scott Manley