Moon lander tipped sideways on lunar surface but ‘alive and well’

The moon lander dubbed Odysseus is “alive and well” but resting on its side a day after its white-knuckle touchdown as the first private spacecraft ever to reach the lunar surface, and the first from the U.S. since 1972, the company behind the vehicle said on Friday.

The vehicle is believed to have caught one of its six landing feet on the lunar surface near the end of its final descent and tipped over, coming to rest sideways, propped up on a rock, an analysis of data by flight engineers showed, according to Houston-based Intuitive Machines.

Still, all indications are that Odysseus “is stable near or at our intended landing site” close to a crater called Malapert A in the region of the moon’s south pole, said Stephen Altemus, chief executive officer of Intuitive Machines, which built and flew the lander.

“We do have communications with the lander,” and mission control operators are sending commands to the vehicle, Altemus said, adding that they were working to obtain the first photo images from the lunar surface from the landing site.

A brief update on the mission’s status posted to the company’s website earlier on Friday described Odysseus “alive and well.”

The company had said shortly after touchdown on Thursday that radio signals indicated Odysseus, a 13-foot-tall hexagonal cylinder, had landed in an upright position, but Atlemus said that faulty conclusion was based on telemetry from before the landing.

Although the lander’s horizontal position is far from ideal, company officials said that all but one of the six NASA science and technology payloads were mounted on portions of the vehicle left exposed and receptive to communications, “which is very good for us,” Altemus said.

“We think we can meet all the needs of