TLDR · SCIENCE & FUTURISTIC TECHNOLOGY

IT TURNS OUT THAT ODYSSEUS LANDED ON THE MOON WITHOUT ANY ALTIMETRY DATA

arstechnica.com5 min read

Summary from the TLDR newsletter

Intuitive Machines believes that its mission to land on the Moon was a complete success, despite Odysseus toppling over after touching down. The moon lander's range finders were discovered to be inoperable a couple of hours before it was due to attempt to land on the Moon, so the company rewrote its software to take advantage of three telescopes on a NASA payload for altimetry purposes. While the patch mostly worked, Odysseus' onboard flight computer was unable to process the data in real time - its last accurate altitude reading was more than 12 minutes before touchdown. This forced the lander to rely on optical data, resulting in it coming down much faster than planned.