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NASA News Conference on Intuitive Machines' First Lunar Landing · Elon Musk Podcast

• 0:02
  Good afternoon and welcome to NASA's Johnson Space Center in
• 0:06
  Houston. I'm NILA for Ramsey with NASA
• 0:09
  Communications. Thank you for joining us.
• 0:12
  On February 22nd, Intuitive Machines, as I AM 1 mission
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  softly landed in the South Pole region of the Moon near
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  Mallaport. A named Odysseus.
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  The Lander completed a seven day journey to become the first US
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  soft landing on the Moon in more than 50 years.
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  Joining us today to provide insight on this historic mission
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  and to answer questions, we have Steve Altimas, Co Founder and
• 0:39
  CEO at Intuitive Machines, Joel Kearns, Deputy Associate
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  Administrator for Exploration Science Mission Directorate at
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  NASA Headquarters in Washington, Doctor Tim Crane, Chief
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  Technology Officer and Co Founder at Intuitive Machines
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  and Doctor Prasan Desai, Deputy Associate Administrator of the
• 1:03
  Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA
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  Headquarters. First, we'll start with some
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  initial remarks from our briefers before opening it up
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  for questions. We'll be taking your questions
• 1:14
  on our phone bridge this afternoon.
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  So if you've joined us today, please plus star one to add your
• 1:20
  name to the queue and ask your question.
• 1:23
  We'll now begin with opening remarks from Steve.
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  Thank you, Dillifer. Well, hello everybody.
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  It's reflected before we came into the briefing studio this
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  afternoon that this is the first briefing about being on the
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  surface of the moon for the first time in about 52 years in
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  this room. So that's quite incredible and
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  it's a pleasure to be here. Intuitive Machines, Odysseus
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  Lander landed yesterday at 524 a central time.
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  We did have a stable controlled landing and a safe soft
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  touchdown. I'll give you a little bit of
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  description today about the the state of Odysseus or OD and it's
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  attitude on the surface and what what you can expect from it over
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  the coming days. It's pretty incredible.
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  It's it was a quite a spicy seven day.
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  Mission. To get to the moon and I'll give
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  you some fun facts about how far we've traveled and and how fast
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  we've gone. So just to begin with, the
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  vehicle is stable near or at our intended landing site.
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  We do have communications with the with the Lander.
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  It's from the larger radio astronomy dishes around the
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  world that are part of our lunar telemetry network and to the
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  spacecraft from several of the antennas and two of the radios.
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  So that's phenomenal to begin with.
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  So we're beginning to now that we're on the goon hilly dish in
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  the United Kingdom, we're downloading and commanding,
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  downloading data from the from the buffers in the spacecraft
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  and commanding the spacecraft and trying to get you surface
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  photos because I know that everyone's hungry for those
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  surface photos. But we got some interesting data
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  that gives us a position, an attitude of where the where the
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  Lander is. And I'll explain that in a
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  moment. We have the sun impinging on the
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  solar arrays and charging our batteries.
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  We are providing power to the spacecraft and we're at 100%
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  state of charge. That's fantastic.
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  I talked to you about the communications, and we will be
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  taking an image, hopefully this weekend from the Lunar
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  Reconnaissance Orbiter to find the Lander and pinpoint its
• 3:42
  location in the South Pole region of the Moon.
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  If you can go to the photo here that we have, this is a photo
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  that I thought you'd find interesting that we'll release
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  to the public here. Here we're flying about 10
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  kilometers over the surface of Schaumburger Crater near the
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  South Pole region of the Moon. We're still about 200 kilometers
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  up, up range from from where our intended landing site is.
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  But here we have a one of our public affairs cameras taking
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  this beautiful image and you see how shadowed and you know
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  undulating the the terrain is and that's important to
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  understand how difficult it is to to land on the surface of the
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  moon. So thanks for that image.
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  Going back, I could say that it was quite phenomenal that if you
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  think about it, we were traveling 25,000 miles an hour
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  and we came down and touched down at about 6 miles an hour
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  with a down range traverse of about two miles an hour.
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  That's walking speed. So that's kind of just an
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  interesting metric for you. We traveled 2 1/2 times the
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  distance to the lunar surface. That's about 600,000 miles due
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  to the trajectory and the number of orbits that we've gone
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  through in doing that and in and in performing that incredible
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  deceleration. Our first of a kind liquid
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  oxygen, liquid methane, additively manufactured 3D
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  printed engine burned six times for a cumulative burn time of
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  over 20 minutes. It's just an incredible
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  performing machine and we're really proud to take that
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  technology to ATRL Level 9. I got to say something about the
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  the team. The OPS teams were cool under
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  pressure for the whole seven days of.
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  It was quite amazing to see him and work real space Cowboys.
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  And you know, we worked through all the difficulties.
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  If you think back from Apollo days, there wasn't 1 mission
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  that went absolutely perfectly. So you have to be adaptable, you
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  have to be innovative and you have to persevere.
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  And we persevered right up until the last moments to get this
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  soft touchdown like we wanted to.
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  Let me just talk briefly about attitude on the surface this a
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  little Lander. I'm going to pretend that's the
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  rock that the Landers leaning on.
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  We think we came down with. Like I said, about 6 miles an
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  hour this way and about two miles an hour this way and
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  caught a foot in the surface and the and the Lander has tipped
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  like this and we believe this is the surface the the orientation
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  of the Lander on the moon. We're getting sun moving this
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  way around the Lander, so the solar arrays are being powered
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  and we believe a little later we'll get Solar Sun on the top
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  deck solar array. The majority of our payloads are
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  all in view and we are collecting science and we've
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  collected science along the way to the moon and I've been
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  downloading that data, in particular, 3 payloads that are
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  positioned on the Lander. They have been active
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  operationally used in this in this mission, the Lane One
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  payload out of Marshall Space Flight Center.
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  We actually assisted us in determining our precise location
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  in space orbit determination we call it using a Doppler
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  measurement that was very useful and and as it was part of the
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  Deep Space Network it augmented our communications from our own
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  commercial network. The other one you've heard about
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  was the NASA Doppler LIDAR from Langley Research Center and we
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  integrated their telemetry stream into our NAV application
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  navigation application and we use that for our power descent
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  initiation. And then finally the one that
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  was very useful was a new technology out of Glenn Research
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  Center and that was the radio frequency mass gauging.
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  And that that instrument really gave us an understanding of what
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  what the propellant tank levels were, which helped us budget the
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  amount of propellant to take us all the way safely to the
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  surface of the moon. So very interesting mission so
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  far as we get more telemetry and turn more things on, we'll be
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  updating you over the coming days of the analysis and the
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  reconstruction of of you know the landing.
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  Tim can comment that on that a little bit today on how we, how
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  we did the power descent all the way to the surface and why we
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  believe in the data that I'm talking to you about today.
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  Yesterday we thought from just to clear up some confusion, we
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  thought we were upright and the reason was that the tanks we're
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  reading this is the X direction and the tanks were reading
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  gravity on the moon. At the fill levels, there were
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  still residuals in the tank and we saw those measurements in the
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  X direction. Well, that was stale telemetry.
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  So when we worked through the night to get other telemetry
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  down, we noticed that in the Z direction, this direction is
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  where we're seeing the tank residual tank quantities.
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  And so that's what tells us with certain fairly certain terms,
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  the orientation of the vehicle and hopefully we'll get a
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  picture here this weekend and and share it with you Milifer.
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  That's all I have. Thank you so much, Steve.
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  Next up we have Joel Kearns. Joel.
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  Hey, thank you, Noah. For first let me congratulate
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  Intuitive Machines for three major accomplishments.
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  The 1st, as Steve said is for having the first a successful
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  soft landing on the moon by the United States since 1972.
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  The second is for being the first non government commercial
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  organization to actually touchdown safely on the surface
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  of the Moon. And the third is we're having a
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  touchdown .80° S latitude much closer to the South Pole of the
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  moon than any earlier AUS robotic or human explorers.
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  Let me give you some of the context for the importance of
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  Intuitive Machines accomplishment on their mission.
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  In 2017, the nation charged NASA to expand our scientific and
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  technical work in the area of the Moon science, technology and
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  human explorers under our Artemis initiative.
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  As part of that, NASA went down the path to to listen to what
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  industry had been telling us for some years, which is that for
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  robotic landing services that we should be able to purchase that
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  from US industry instead of doing it ourselves at NASA for
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  robotic systems. Now NASA is very good at
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  building and operating robotic probes throughout the solar
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  system, but we knew we'd be going back to the moon
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  repeatedly to do science and technical studies and eventually
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  human exploration. So we put into place this
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  commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative or Eclipse
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  to buy and effect the service to bring NASA cargo down to the
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  surface of the moon and have the data from those experiments
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  brought back to Earth by industry.
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  Intuitive Machines is one of the participants in that initiative
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  that's now been awarded 3 service contracts to bring NASA
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  equipment, experiments and cargo down to the surface of the moon.
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  And this was intuitive, Machines first attempt their first
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  mission to the moon carrying our cargo.
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  Now I've talked about all the potential advantages of having
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  industry do this for NASA. The industry had told us years
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  ago that they thought they were technically ready to do it.
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  That they thought if they specialized in doing it, that
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  they could probably do it at less cost and much more
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  frequently and much faster from initial order than NASA probably
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  could, since we would normally build a custom spacecraft for
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  every endeavor. And we've seen that so far in
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  the progress that our CLIPS vendors have made, as they're
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  working down to fly off their first missions in two of the
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  machines, though however, and doing a soft touchdown on the
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  moon has perverted the first real evidence that this is
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  possible to do. It's possible with today's
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  technology, with dedicated engineering and appropriate
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  financial management, to have a private company actually design
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  A spacecraft, develop a mission, buy a rocket, and fly all the
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  way to the moon at soft land on the surface of the moon.
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  Not just an area where we landed earlier decades ago near the
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  equator with the Apollo missions, but in the unusual
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  territory at the South Pole which is the focus of our future
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  human Artemis missions, this is a gigantic accomplishment.
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  On this particular mission we had the company bring 6 NASA
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  science and technology experiments on board down to the
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  lunar surface. They ranged to get to do studies
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  in science in looking at the electron density and plasma on
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  the surface of the moon. Technology studies such as
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  measuring a rocket plume impingement during landing,
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  navigation studies on the way to the moon down to the surface of
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  the moon, laser ranging fuel quantity as other investigations
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  and it's and interesting enough when we started this we had put
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  together a list of different instruments and payloads that
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  the commercial lunar payload services companies could
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  volunteer to take down to the surface of the moon.
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  And intuitive machines pick the complement of five payloads
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  which we later augmented with the radio frequency mass gauge
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  fuel measurement experiment. And intuitive machines pick the
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  number of payloads and experiments from NASA to to
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  bring down which is Steve Widdell greatly benefited them
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  during the execution of their mission.
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  So at this point today is Intuitive machines looks to make
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  sure they understand the status of the Odysseus vehicle.
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  We are already looking back at scientific and technological
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  data that we accumulated during the transit out to the moon
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  during the deorbit operations, and we're looking forward to
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  getting even more data as intuitive machines figure
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  finishes the checkout of Odysseus now.
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  In doing so, we knew at NASA when we went out to gather this
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  by Commercial Services that we had these great potential
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  benefits, but we also had risks. We knew, for example, no one had
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  previously done this. We knew we were asking industry
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  to do an incredibly difficult thing to do to go from those
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  high speeds of orbital velocity all the way down to the very
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  slow speeds at A to get to a particular position on the moon
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  where we wanted them to land and intuitive machines
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  Accomplishment for this actually shows everyone that this is this
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  approach will work and we look forward to using it over and
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  over in the future. Nullifer.
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  Thank you so much. We'll now hand it over to Tim.
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  Thank you, Nullifer. Very excited to be here today.
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  They they told me to smile before the the press conference
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  and I can't help but smile anyway because we landed on the
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  moon a little bit about Odysseus.
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  Odysseus is a mostly autonomous vehicle.
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  Our operations crew would monitor the vehicle during
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  flight, We'd provide some trajectory updates, parameter
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  updates, and that's what got us into lunar orbit.
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  The lunar descent is different though.
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  During orbit we would prepare for maneuvers.
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  We'd watch the maneuver and then know that we had time to recover
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  afterwards and replan for the next stage.
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  But lunar powered descent is the end game.
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  There is no after. You're either successful or you
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  fail. And so the last Rev around the
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  moon, we buttoned up any last minute changes we wanted on the
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  vehicle, and there were a few that we may talk about today,
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  and basically the vehicle disappeared behind the far side
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  of the moon. We have lost the signal for 25
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  minutes. Everybody got up and went to the
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  bathroom. There was nothing to do but wait
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  for the signal to come back on. It was amazing how quickly we
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  adapted to continuous communications during transit to
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  regular losses of signal being a part of our life because we're
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  circling the moon. Once we came up around the North
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  Pole of the moon, we were in a polar orbit.
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  The vehicle was completely autonomous.
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  We watched as the onboard systems pointed our cameras to
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  the moon. We processed over 10,000 images
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  onboard with our own machine learning algorithms to manage
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  the speed of the vehicle and the guidance system decided based on
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  the propulsion system are available thrust levels, orbital
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  velocity and distance to the target near the South Pole.
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  When the right time to turn the engines were were that's power
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  descent initiation and the engines came on approximately 13
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  minutes before landing. We were at full thrust for what
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  we call Braking 1. Basically, we were trying to
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  slow down from approximately 3600 mph to something more like
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  30 mph near the landing site That's breaking one the vehicle
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  performed Florida State. Our our main engine thrust was
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  good. Our thrust control was perfect
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  engine performance. It has exceeded expectations in
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  many ways and flight control my my personal background kept the
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  vehicle pointed exactly where it was supposed to go for the
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  entire burn. We monitored down until a pitch
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  over event so early in the trajectory.
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  The vehicle is basically flying sideways with respect to the
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  moon and we're flying in One Direction and the engine is
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  slowing us down to take that velocity out of the vehicle.
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  Once we get within a kilometer of the landing site, however,
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  the vehicle goes into what we call a pitch over and this
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  brings another set of cameras into alignment with the landing
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  site. At that point we lost calm,
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  which we knew we would do because we switched from one set
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  of antennas to another and then we regained communications all
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  the way until approximately 200 meters above the landing site.
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  Then there was a tense moment where we did not have regular
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  communications, but our dedicated radio and ground
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  operations crew found the signal, and within an hour or so
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  we were getting the first data down from the surface of the
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  men. I could not be prouder of our
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  operations team and our engineers for putting together
• 17:45
  Odysseus, which was a marvelous machine, And to look at the moon
• 17:50
  every night now and know that we have new hardware there that we
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  had a hand in building in our lifetime, something I couldn't
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  say before. It really was a a magical,
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  magical day. Thank you.
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  Thank you so much, Tim. And now, finally, we'll hand it
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  over to Prasan. Thank you.
• 18:09
  So first and foremost, congratulations to Intuitive
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  Machines, an amazing successful landing success story.
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  You know, one of the things that we from a technology and space
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  tech want to do is we want to go with repeated access to various
• 18:24
  parts of the solar system to do this tech demonstration.
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  Because in our view technology drives exploration.
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  And we had a number of experiments on this technology
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  demonstrations on this Lander and one was called to be used
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  operationally. And I'll talk a little bit about
• 18:40
  that, but that this aspect of a successful landing really allows
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  to pointing on to what Joel said is repeated access to the lunar
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  surface. We have a slew of technologies
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  we want to demonstrate as well as many science certificate
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  instruments that we want to send for understanding the lunar
• 18:59
  environment. And by having a successful story
• 19:02
  like Today, Yesterday that happened, it allows us for
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  setting up the next set of projects that we want to fly and
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  demonstrate right. One of the things that we wanted
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  to do is trying to do as much as possible testing on the ground,
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  but that only gets us to a certain technology readiness
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  level, which is typically TRL 5, sometimes six.
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  What that means is we're we're not quite in the environment
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  that we want to be in. And so This is why we want to go
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  and experiment in space or on a lunar surface, wherever it
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  happens to be. The the one of the big
• 19:38
  technology demonstrations on on this landing was the navigation
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  Doppler Lidar. We were hoping through the test
• 19:45
  of flying on this mission was to get it to TRL 6, which is the
• 19:50
  relevant environment, the lunar environment.
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  However, with the successful ingestion of it during landing,
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  we were able to get a operational system now TRL 9,
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  which is it's ready to be used from now on right as opposed to
• 20:03
  further testing. This wasn't totally by accident.
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  The teams at NASA Langley Research Center that helped
• 20:10
  develop this technology did a lot of development over the
• 20:13
  years, as well as working with intuitive machines to see about
• 20:17
  ingesting this data if necessary.
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  Fortunately, all that hard work came to bear yesterday when
• 20:24
  there was a technical issue and the teams decided that hey, it
• 20:28
  was best to try to do the switch and rely on this tech
• 20:32
  demonstration. Everything we understand from
• 20:35
  the telemetry we received, which is limited to this point until
• 20:38
  we get all the data back, that the technology performed Florida
• 20:41
  State better than expected performance.
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  It acquired range and velocity data well above the required 5
• 20:49
  kilometers altitude as it's descending.
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  And the reason why we need this data for successful landing is
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  as Landers come down, we would ideally like to have them come
• 21:00
  straight down. But because there's errors in
• 21:03
  the all the operations of the system, you wind up being a
• 21:06
  little bit going laterally going there.
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  This measurement is really to try to get an understanding of
• 21:13
  that lateral motion so that the system can counteract that and
• 21:17
  zero out that lateral motion to come down straight down.
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  So you need these type of measurements to make that
• 21:22
  happen. This is one set of technologies
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  that allows to do that. There are a slew of other ones
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  to make the landings even more reliable and safer that we hope
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  to demonstrate on future landings.
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  And so having this successful landing today allows us to gear
• 21:36
  up and get ready to do more of this going forward to enable the
• 21:41
  Artemis endeavor of repeated access to the surface and
• 21:45
  eventual landing of humans on the on the surface and and
• 21:49
  sustained presence on the surface with infrastructure
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  laying it down. And so this is the first step in
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  allowing for that and a great day for allowing us to get ready
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  for more to come as we go forward.
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  Thank you, Prasan, and thank you to our briefers for those
• 22:06
  initial remarks. We'll now open it up to
• 22:08
  questions. Again, if you've joined us on
• 22:10
  the line today or on our phone Bridge, please press * one to
• 22:14
  submit your question. Once your name is called, please
• 22:17
  state to whom you'd like to direct your questions.
• 22:21
  Once your question has been answered you, you will be muted.
• 22:24
  But if your question has already been answered, you will push
• 22:27
  Star 2 to withdraw it. Let's open our phone bridge.
• 22:31
  First up, we have Gina Sinceri with ABC News.
• 22:34
  Gina. Question is for either Steve or
• 22:39
  Tim. What was your Hail Mary moment
• 22:41
  during that where you went? We think we can make.
• 22:44
  This work and we just made it work.
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  What was? What were those moments?
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  Or were there more than one? Well, I think there were several
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  of those moments. Like I said, it was a spicy
• 22:54
  mission. I'll let Tim comment a little
• 22:56
  bit, but you know the idea to pull the range telemetry from
• 23:02
  the the, the NASA Doppler Lidar was interesting and change out
• 23:08
  the laser range Finder call outs in the navigation application.
• 23:13
  All that was very straightforward to go calculate.
• 23:16
  Part of that was put in the table, but part of that had to
• 23:20
  mean that we had to rewrite the navigation application software.
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  And when you do that. To upload it to the vehicle you
• 23:29
  actually have to stop guidance navigation and control.
• 23:34
  And when we ran that in the simulation and we ran that on
• 23:37
  the flat sat, it did not like being rebooted like that.
• 23:42
  That's software and we saw the guidance drift way off.
• 23:45
  We saw a lot of helium usage and and that was very sporty.
• 23:50
  So I think in a very time, crunch time, getting ready for
• 23:54
  power descent, we had to work feverishly to get that sequence
• 24:00
  of events, almost like Fred Hayes in a in a in Apollo 13.
• 24:04
  We're trying to figure out the sequence of events to
• 24:07
  reinitialize the software, in particular, reinitialize
• 24:11
  navigation. And so that was done in a very
• 24:15
  sporty way and it was brilliantly executed by the
• 24:18
  team. And so that was the one that had
• 24:21
  us all biting our nails just a little bit, because once you
• 24:24
  start power descent, there's no going back like Tim said.
• 24:28
  Tim, do you have another one? Yeah, there there was.
• 24:32
  I I will say on that one a parallel effort for sure.
• 24:35
  So we had one team rewriting the code, we had one team testing
• 24:38
  procedures and then another team once the code was written
• 24:42
  pushing it up on the vehicle moving into place.
• 24:44
  That synchronization came down to a Florida State executed
• 24:49
  reboot of the navigation system that allowed us to successfully
• 24:52
  land. So that was exciting.
• 24:54
  Another exciting moment we had after our TCM one our trajectory
• 24:58
  correction maneuver we discovered that our engine
• 25:01
  pointing geometry had an error in it and we had to study that a
• 25:07
  bit and we found the the reason why we had a geometry linkage
• 25:12
  that was a little bit different than we expected.
• 25:14
  Very difficult to test how that linkage to the main gimbal would
• 25:18
  respond under full thrust in space.
• 25:20
  And so we were able to use flight data to correct that.
• 25:23
  But that was another area where we had to patch the software to
• 25:26
  put that correction in place. And you know, we became very
• 25:29
  proficient at it. I will say, and you hear this in
• 25:32
  the space industry a lot that we stand on the shoulders of
• 25:35
  giants. The work we were doing was built
• 25:38
  upon work people had done before us.
• 25:42
  NASA score flight software is a big part of what we do on the
• 25:45
  flight vehicle and it has a lot of the capabilities to reload
• 25:50
  and reinitialize software built into it.
• 25:52
  And we were able to take advantage of that because of the
• 25:54
  foresight that people who had done space missions before had
• 25:57
  invested in in that piece of technology and we used it to
• 26:01
  great effectiveness going forward.
• 26:05
  Great. Thank you.
• 26:06
  Next up, we have Marsha Dunn with The Associated Press.
• 26:11
  Hi. My questions are for you, Steve.
• 26:14
  What's your best guess for how close you are to the targeted
• 26:18
  touchdown area? And you said a lake caught the
• 26:22
  surface. Do you think the Lander came in
• 26:25
  builded and it's to catch a lake like that, put it as caught on a
• 26:29
  rock, and then belly flopped? And do you think Odysseus was
• 26:33
  ever upright, even for a moment or two, or do you think it just
• 26:36
  landed on its side from the ghetto?
• 26:37
  Thanks. Well, thank you Marsha for that
• 26:41
  question. We are reconstructing with the
• 26:45
  data that we get, what we think happened.
• 26:49
  My theory is just a theory until we get an actual picture and see
• 26:54
  what happened. But if you pass me the model,
• 26:56
  Tim, I'll show you here is if we're coming down, we came down
• 27:01
  a little bit faster. We were supposed to come down at
• 27:04
  1m per second, which is about two miles an hour, and we're
• 27:07
  supposed to null the lateral velocity, which was was supposed
• 27:13
  to be 0, and we're coming straight down.
• 27:14
  We had about two miles an hour going this way.
• 27:17
  And so if you're coming down at six miles an hour is what we
• 27:20
  think, and moving 2 miles an hour and you catch a foot, we
• 27:25
  might have fractured that landing gear and tipped over
• 27:27
  gently. Like I like I said, we have to
• 27:31
  go look at when the main engine cut off was to see if the main
• 27:34
  engine had any coupling effect to that or not.
• 27:37
  I can't tell you for sure. It'd be good to see the health
• 27:39
  of the landing gear and see how that all looks.
• 27:42
  And so it'll be a few days before we get all of that put
• 27:45
  together and reconstructed. That's an action I've already
• 27:47
  given the team and I look forward to the answer to help
• 27:50
  inform our future flights. I can add to that that after
• 27:55
  pitch over we have a hazard relative navigation system that
• 27:58
  generates measurements at 1 Hertz.
• 28:00
  This is our optical processing and we generated 84 measurements
• 28:05
  and process 79 of those. So 84 is important because we
• 28:08
  have an approximately a 122nd timeline from pitch over to
• 28:12
  landing. So the fact that we generated 84
• 28:15
  accounts for a portion of that timeline, they're not
• 28:17
  necessarily continuous. The fact that we process 79 of
• 28:20
  them and they were accepted by the common filter that we have
• 28:23
  in our software means that there was very good agreement between
• 28:26
  the inertial measurement unit and our our camera velocity
• 28:30
  measurement and the NDL navigation Doppler lighter on
• 28:33
  board. With those all in agreement that
• 28:35
  means we had roughly 90 seconds out of 120 seconds guaranteed
• 28:40
  stable flight coming in. So we were very close to the
• 28:43
  vertical phase. We don't have the data from that
• 28:46
  interval yet. And so we're waiting to see what
• 28:48
  that is. But that's a really good
• 28:49
  indication that we were in stable control and vertical at
• 28:52
  the time we touched down. Thank you.
• 28:57
  Bill Harwood with CBS News. Hey, thank you very much.
• 29:02
  I think this is for Steve. How do you guys know it's
• 29:05
  resting on a rock as it were and not on its side?
• 29:08
  In other words, how many degrees of vertical did your hike
• 29:11
  readings lead you to think if if you even got a number like that?
• 29:15
  And are there any payloads on board that simply cannot work in
• 29:19
  the current orientation? Thanks.
• 29:22
  Well, I'll let Tim address part of it.
• 29:26
  But our reconstruction by based on how much power we're getting
• 29:31
  off of this solar array says that it that it has to be
• 29:35
  somewhat elevated off the surface horizontally.
• 29:38
  So that's why we think it's on a on a rock or the foot is in a in
• 29:42
  a in a crevice or something to to get to hold it in that that
• 29:47
  attitude. Fortunately for most, most of
• 29:52
  the payloads are exposed to the outside above the surface that's
• 29:58
  down the the, the panel that's down towards the surface.
• 30:01
  That panel only had a single payload on it and it's not an
• 30:06
  operational payload, it's it's a static payload.
• 30:09
  And that one, we're still going to try to take a picture of that
• 30:12
  payload if we can. And that would meet those
• 30:15
  objectives of taking a photograph of of that art cube
• 30:19
  that's in the on that panel and that one that's pointed towards
• 30:23
  the surface of the of the moon. So we're going to try to
• 30:25
  download all the pictures and see if we got got that picture
• 30:28
  in view. Tim, any more insight?
• 30:31
  We also have some inertial measurement unit data.
• 30:33
  We've turned a lot of the the flight instrumentation off on
• 30:36
  the vehicle for power management purposes.
• 30:38
  But before we did we were able to get some packets and measure
• 30:41
  lunar gravity and most of that lunar gravity was in the Z
• 30:45
  direction on that model which is up along fairly close to level.
• 30:51
  So there is something whether we run into a slope, which would
• 30:54
  also explain a tip over if there's more slope than than we
• 30:56
  anticipated at touchdown. So the inertial measurement unit
• 31:01
  gives a very strong indication that this is up and and those
• 31:07
  sensors are very, very exquisite.
• 31:09
  So it's a confirmation of what we're seeing from the tanks.
• 31:13
  Exactly what the material is that's underneath the Lander is
• 31:16
  something we hope to get some imagery from over the next
• 31:19
  coming days and and find out more.
• 31:21
  Where is eager to see those images as the public is.
• 31:25
  Yeah. And and I would add in terms of
• 31:27
  the technology payloads, we've already gotten data along the
• 31:30
  way to say they've been successful, right.
• 31:32
  So the radio frequency mass gauge has been working since
• 31:35
  long, you know, as soon as we got into our low Earth orbit and
• 31:38
  going on the way. So we've gotten data all along
• 31:40
  that way as well as during the descent which we're still
• 31:43
  waiting for telemetry on that. The navigation Doppler or LIDAR,
• 31:47
  we got that real time going down.
• 31:49
  So we know that worked very well and successful aspect of it,
• 31:51
  right, The scalps, the stereo cameras, we're waiting for the
• 31:55
  pictures to come back there, but you know everything else seems
• 31:58
  to be working very well. So we anticipate that that
• 32:00
  worked well during the descent as well and just waiting for the
• 32:04
  data to come back to, to analyze to see how that went.
• 32:07
  So a lot of the payloads have already been successfully
• 32:09
  demonstrated. Yeah, I know.
• 32:11
  This is Joel. What I'd say is that in addition
• 32:13
  to what Prasad and Tim said about the fact that so much data
• 32:17
  was acquired during transit out to the moon, long lunar Warburg
• 32:21
  and descent, Of course we'll evaluate if there's any
• 32:23
  particular measurements that we can take because of the vehicle
• 32:27
  configuration, but in general, we expect to get a lot of data
• 32:30
  and a lot of measurements from the instruments, both science
• 32:32
  and technology. Yeah, I have an add to that too.
• 32:35
  You know, the NDL is a perfect example of a problem solved.
• 32:38
  But the radio frequency mass gauge was also something that we
• 32:42
  used for a problem avoided. We had a temperature sensor on
• 32:45
  one of our tanks and we fly. Cryogenic fluids are very, very
• 32:49
  cold for propellant and a temperature sensor was
• 32:53
  recording, reporting back colder than we had anticipated.
• 32:57
  Well, that could have been indicative of a leak.
• 32:59
  And so we were beginning to spin up some contingencies.
• 33:02
  Well, what if we have a leak, What do we do?
• 33:04
  But because we had the radio frequency mass gauge, we're able
• 33:07
  to confirm that our tank masses were stable and we just had a
• 33:11
  little bit of an anomalous sensor reading and that avoided
• 33:14
  a problem and we didn't spend more energy going through that.
• 33:17
  So that technology is one that maybe isn't quite as dramatic as
• 33:21
  a as a Late Orbit software reboot, but nonetheless gave us
• 33:26
  confidence going through the mission.
• 33:29
  Great. Thank you so much for your
• 33:31
  insight on that. Next up we have Ken Chang with
• 33:33
  the New York Times. Ken.
• 33:36
  Yes, hi. Thank you.
• 33:37
  I was wondering I guess for Tamara and Steve for a TikTok of
• 33:42
  what happened after lunar insertion.
• 33:45
  It looks like the orbit is lower than what was in the press press
• 33:49
  kit and then you had another burn that evening and then you
• 33:55
  avoided the DOI burn and and then you had it, it moved up to
• 34:00
  launch of the landing time. So I was wondering what the very
• 34:03
  orbits were and how that affected the landing time.
• 34:07
  And also, when did you find out that you had a bomb based
• 34:09
  alternator? I missed the last part.
• 34:13
  I'll start with the first part. Kenneth, do you want to ask the
• 34:16
  last part again? When did you find out that you
• 34:21
  had a laser altimeter? Yeah.
• 34:25
  OK. Laser altimeter.
• 34:27
  So the first part of the question was about the lunar
• 34:29
  orbit insertion and what happened after that, right?
• 34:34
  If I understand your question right, well, we were having some
• 34:38
  difficulty with communications around the world communicating
• 34:42
  from the different configurations and the different
• 34:45
  dishes that we had around the world up to our radios.
• 34:49
  And we have Poisonics radios and Talus Alinea radios and some of
• 34:55
  those that Talus Alinea radios have a range beacon and we have
• 34:59
  a frequency that we know, a carrier frequency that we're
• 35:02
  operating on. And some of the dishes were
• 35:04
  smaller around the world. So in certain parts of the world
• 35:07
  we had a weaker signal and we would lose that carrier lock.
• 35:11
  And when that carrier lock goes down, you can't get a good orbit
• 35:16
  determination. And there was a shift in the
• 35:18
  ranging beacon. So that shift and that turn
• 35:20
  around ratio in the ranging beacon is such that you had some
• 35:25
  inaccuracy, we had some inaccuracy.
• 35:28
  So we got the best data we could possibly get going into our
• 35:32
  lunar orbit insertion burn. But what we found was that was
• 35:35
  slightly elliptical. Actually it was elliptical, not
• 35:39
  highly elliptical, but it was elliptical orbit And so we were
• 35:41
  not comfortable necessarily with our the proximity to to, to the
• 35:48
  to the South Pole area. We were a little too close for
• 35:50
  our own comfort. So we decided to come in and do
• 35:53
  a a a raise of our of our periloon position.
• 35:58
  And we did that very quickly, autonomously and put us in a
• 36:01
  safer configuration for the mission and be prepared.
• 36:05
  And that burn we did in such a way that it eliminated the need
• 36:09
  for a de orbit insertion burn, very small burn before we did
• 36:14
  power descent. When we were looking at our
• 36:20
  position around the moon, we decided to take a laser range
• 36:24
  Finder, power it on and ping the surface to see how close we were
• 36:28
  because we're having trouble with this orbit determination in
• 36:31
  this Doppler measurement that we're trying to get.
• 36:33
  And we saw that that laser didn't fire and what we found
• 36:37
  was that there's a safety enable switch because it's not an ISAFE
• 36:42
  laser. That safety enable switch is in
• 36:46
  the box and was not disabled. So it's like having a a safety
• 36:51
  on a on a on a on a firearm, it's it's for ground processing
• 36:56
  and that was an oversight on our part.
• 36:58
  And so those laser range finders could not be turned on and we
• 37:02
  couldn't manipulate that enable switch or disable switch with
• 37:06
  the software. And so those range finders had
• 37:09
  been tested and would have worked if we'd had caught that
• 37:13
  oversight and remove that enable before or disable before flight.
• 37:18
  So I think that got your question.
• 37:20
  Tim, anything to add on that? No, that's right.
• 37:22
  I think the key thing was we have an incredible flight
• 37:25
  dynamics team who were able to determine that from the orbit we
• 37:29
  were in, we could raise Paralun with a lunar correction maneuver
• 37:34
  that they had built in with the foresight to trim the orbit.
• 37:36
  If we had some unexpected conditions and it basically put
• 37:39
  us into our descent orbit about four or five Revs before we we
• 37:44
  nominally would have done that. But the orbit still phased over
• 37:47
  the landing site in the right way and gave us a great
• 37:49
  opportunity to execute power descent.
• 37:54
  Thank you so much for that Lauren Grush with Bloomberg.
• 37:59
  Hi. Thank you so much for taking my
• 38:01
  question. I think this might be for Steve
• 38:03
  or Tim. I'm curious if you've been able
• 38:05
  to determine if the tipping damaged the Lander at all based
• 38:10
  on the rock that it's leaning on.
• 38:11
  Is there any concern of further degradation because of the
• 38:15
  position that it's in? Thanks.
• 38:18
  Well, again Lauren, we're hopeful to get pictures and
• 38:21
  really do an assessment of the structure and assessment of all
• 38:24
  the external equipment. I we we are hopeful that the top
• 38:31
  deck solar array is not damaged and that as the sun comes around
• 38:35
  the Lander will be able to get some power generation from the
• 38:38
  top deck solar array which which is now vertical.
• 38:42
  And so we'll see what that means.
• 38:44
  But so far we have quite a bit of operational capability even
• 38:49
  though we're we're tipped over and so that's that's really
• 38:53
  exciting for us and we we're continuing the surface
• 38:55
  operations mission as a result of it.
• 39:00
  Thank you. Next up we have Andrea
• 39:03
  Linefelder with the Houston Chronicle.
• 39:05
  Andrea. Hi, these questions are for Tim
• 39:09
  Crane, that final orbit you took.
• 39:14
  I just want to make sure that was specifically to implement
• 39:16
  the software path to use NASA's LIDAR tech demo for landing.
• 39:20
  Also, Tim on Twitter or excuse me, X, you mentioned a big role
• 39:24
  maneuver. Was this part of the plan?
• 39:26
  If not, what caused the role maneuver and did that create any
• 39:28
  complications? And finally, I was hoping you
• 39:30
  could walk us through some of the communication issues
• 39:32
  experienced right after landing. Was it difficult to get a signal
• 39:35
  because it was at an angle or was it other challenges related
• 39:39
  to being unstoppable? Thank you.
• 39:40
  Thanks, Andrea. I did not catch the first part
• 39:42
  of your question. Could you, could you repeat
• 39:44
  that? Sorry, the first part was you
• 39:48
  know that final orbit that you took that kind of pushed back
• 39:51
  the landing, Was that specifically to implement the
• 39:53
  software patch that that helps you land with the NASA's LIDAR
• 39:57
  tech demo? Yes, OK.
• 39:59
  Thanks. It was we were we were in good
• 40:02
  position to land at approximately 3:30.
• 40:05
  But the the procedures that that Steve was talking about, what
• 40:09
  order do we bring down the, the flight control, the guidance, do
• 40:13
  we inhibit RCS? How do we do that in such a way
• 40:16
  that there's no unexpected consequence on the vehicle?
• 40:18
  For example, if we turned off guidance navigation and control
• 40:22
  but didn't turn off the RCS control valves, they could
• 40:26
  listen to noise on the computer instead of controls to zero, and
• 40:29
  we could open up the valves and and lose control.
• 40:32
  So we were very, very deliberate about working through in what we
• 40:35
  call a flat sat, which is basically the spacecraft
• 40:38
  equipment laid out in a lab driven by a simulation.
• 40:41
  We were very deliberate about working that procedure so that
• 40:44
  when we shut the software down, we could bring it back up
• 40:47
  safely. There was no harm to the
• 40:48
  vehicle. We had the patch ready in time
• 40:50
  for the first landing attempt. We hadn't come to a satisfactory
• 40:54
  procedure yet and we had to get it right.
• 40:56
  And so Steve and I conferred. It would be a little bit more
• 41:00
  fuel to catch the, the, the OR bort once around.
• 41:04
  But again, our flight dynamics and automation team had written
• 41:07
  software that gave us a great amount of flexibility to control
• 41:11
  Odysseus. And we're really at a special
• 41:13
  time in our lunar program and intuitive machines where most of
• 41:16
  our operators are also the subject matter experts who built
• 41:19
  these systems. So we had incredible insight
• 41:21
  what was going on. We had great confidence we can
• 41:23
  make this work, but we needed a little bit more time.
• 41:25
  And so we made the call to abort once around and implemented the
• 41:30
  patch at that time so that when we had that final orbit we were
• 41:33
  in high confidence of landing the role maneuver.
• 41:38
  At the end we had made some decisions.
• 41:41
  You know every, every vehicle has a mass limit and you're
• 41:44
  trying to optimize performance versus mass.
• 41:47
  We had flown a vehicle with fixed antenna and in order to
• 41:51
  fly with fixed antenna we had to look at what our, our landing
• 41:54
  orientation was at the South Pole.
• 41:58
  We landed. In fact you'll see in this model
• 42:01
  there's white, white paint on on some surfaces and and black
• 42:04
  paint on others. That's because we were going to
• 42:06
  land on the South, near the South Pole, and the sun was
• 42:09
  going to illuminate the solar arrays, as you can imagine, and
• 42:12
  then also these white surfaces to reject heat.
• 42:15
  But on the other side we have the cold side, and it gets very,
• 42:19
  very cold if you're not in direct sunlight on the moon.
• 42:21
  So we painted that black to catch reflected light off the
• 42:23
  moon and warm them up. So as we were coming down, we
• 42:30
  wanted our navigation cameras pointed to the ground.
• 42:33
  Then we wanted our navigation ground cameras pointing to the
• 42:36
  ground after we pitched over. But in landing, we had a planned
• 42:42
  roll maneuver to bring our antennas to face the earth, and
• 42:45
  so in order to accommodate that we had a planned roll maneuver.
• 42:48
  It was not unexpected that the roll maneuver would occur.
• 42:53
  It was also expected that there would be a loss of
• 42:55
  communications as we switched from our 1-2 antenna pair to our
• 42:59
  3-4 antenna pair. Thank you so much for that.
• 43:04
  Next up we have Chris Davenport from the Washington Post.
• 43:07
  Chris. Hey, thanks everyone.
• 43:10
  For Tim and Steve, just regarding that audible you had
• 43:14
  to make up and I want to see if I can come down to some of the
• 43:17
  chronology to get a sense of how the day unfolded for yesterday.
• 43:20
  About what time is it that that you realize that that that laser
• 43:24
  range Finder wasn't working and then did you immediately know
• 43:28
  that you could go to the MDL system was just something you
• 43:31
  had planned on as a contingency or did you kind of make this up
• 43:36
  on the fly and decide work on it, you know, in real time
• 43:40
  yesterday? Thanks.
• 43:41
  I'll I'll start and Tim will add a lot of color to this because
• 43:46
  this one, this one was like Gina asked was the Hail Mary issue.
• 43:52
  When we went around the night before and we made that laser
• 43:58
  range Finder measurement, it looked like the laser fired, we
• 44:03
  got an enable in the data, but when we did a deeper analysis
• 44:07
  analysis of it, it was it was not actually fired, it was an
• 44:12
  error in the telemetry. So when we dug into it, we that
• 44:17
  morning, this was the morning of landing, we called MDA and asked
• 44:22
  them what they thought about it and could we convert that
• 44:26
  physical enable switch to a software change to command that
• 44:31
  switch. And they indicated no, there's a
• 44:34
  physical cut out for this and not a software driven cut out
• 44:40
  for this. So we now I get into the control
• 44:44
  room. I can laugh about it now.
• 44:46
  And Tim was on console as the mission director and I said,
• 44:50
  Tim, we're going to have to land without laser range finders.
• 44:52
  And his face got absolutely white because it was like a
• 44:56
  punch in the stomach that we were going to lose the mission.
• 44:59
  And we went around and we said what are we going to do?
• 45:01
  We started to hack into the OS, the operating system of the
• 45:05
  laser range Finder to see if there was a way we could trick
• 45:08
  it some way. We thought about running a
• 45:11
  simulated table of the power descent phase and like predict
• 45:15
  with like some parameters how we might land and there's just way
• 45:20
  too much variables, way too many variables in that running a
• 45:24
  simulation table in against the real world situation.
• 45:29
  So that wasn't going to get work.
• 45:30
  And so Tim and I were walking through the halls and trying to
• 45:33
  find the experts. And he came up with the idea
• 45:36
  that says, why don't we just Plumb the high beam laser and
• 45:41
  the low beam laser from the NDL into the registers for the HRN
• 45:47
  laser range Finder and the TRN laser range Finder.
• 45:50
  He came up with that while we're walking down the hall in a
• 45:53
  hurried way. And it only would work if we
• 45:56
  ingested the range measurement in the NAV application.
• 46:01
  And we had done that because we had worked with the team at
• 46:04
  Langley for so long with the NASA Doppler Lidar that we were
• 46:07
  able to have that instrument in shadow mode to give them better
• 46:13
  quality data. And because it was in shadow
• 46:15
  mode, we had that measurement in the navigation application and
• 46:20
  it was just a brilliant piece of insight by Doctor Crane to say
• 46:23
  let's clear the register and put those two lasers in as the as
• 46:27
  the actual makeshift laser range finders.
• 46:30
  So that's kind of how it unfolded and we needed more
• 46:34
  time. So we delayed and took the risk
• 46:37
  and said let's delay an orbit and switch to a later landing
• 46:42
  time because the landing time was originally around 3/3/23 or
• 46:47
  3/24 and we delayed till, you know 5/24 as you know, based on
• 46:51
  a 2 hour orbit around the moon. So, Tim, anything else?
• 46:55
  Yeah, it it it's it sounds easy in retrospect.
• 47:00
  We had the the navigation Doppler Lidar already plumbed in
• 47:04
  the navigation system and had the range rate data.
• 47:07
  So the three beams on the the NDL produce a velocity
• 47:11
  measurement as pursuant and talked about they also produce a
• 47:14
  range measurement and we were not using the range measurement,
• 47:17
  we were we had just the range rate as a backup to our optical
• 47:20
  systems. But because it was already
• 47:22
  plumbed in there we had to rewrite those rewrite time tags
• 47:26
  into our measurement loader. But the challenge was the the
• 47:31
  lasers. So we have, we have these two
• 47:33
  navigation pods on the vehicle. If you can zoom in there, maybe,
• 47:38
  maybe not. Anyways, there are these two
• 47:40
  navigation pods that have the cameras.
• 47:42
  There you go, 2 navigation pods on either side of the vehicle
• 47:45
  that have cameras and the laser range finders point in the same
• 47:47
  direction as the cameras and those angles were optimized for
• 47:52
  our flight trajectory to give us the best measurements to land
• 47:55
  softly. The NDL was under one of these
• 48:00
  and its angles were optimized to test the extent of its
• 48:04
  performance, not necessarily to feed our navigation system, but
• 48:07
  to test the sensor because it was a technology development.
• 48:10
  So after we figured out we could write the measurements into the
• 48:14
  laser range Finder, we had to quickly tell the computer that
• 48:18
  the laser beams were pointed in different directions.
• 48:20
  And so there were a number of attitude transformations of it's
• 48:24
  not in the same location, it's not in the same orientation, and
• 48:27
  if you've ever seen engineers doing right hand rule
• 48:29
  transformations, there were a lot of broken wrists.
• 48:31
  Put it down here as people were trying to figure out which way
• 48:34
  is it pointing, and I will tell you that in normal software
• 48:37
  development for a spacecraft, this is the kind of thing that
• 48:40
  would have taken a month of writing down the math, cross
• 48:44
  checking it with your colleagues, doing some simple
• 48:47
  calculations to prove that you think you're right, putting it
• 48:49
  into a simulation, running that simulation 10,000 times,
• 48:53
  evaluating the performance. Usually you find an error
• 48:56
  because you did something of that rotation wrong and you roll
• 48:59
  it back and you go again. Our team basically did that in
• 49:01
  an hour and a half and it worked, so it was one of the
• 49:10
  finest pieces of engineering I've ever had a chance to be
• 49:13
  affiliated with. I'd like to add to that that the
• 49:16
  performance of the navigation Doppler Leader technology and
• 49:21
  parallel that was developed by NASA's Langley Research Center
• 49:25
  was outstanding and it was reliable and that's what got got
• 49:29
  Intuitive Machine some of the key data they needed in order to
• 49:32
  soft land. Great.
• 49:35
  Thank you so much for that. Eric Berger with Ars Technica.
• 49:39
  Eric. Hi, thanks very much.
• 49:43
  Congratulations. Question for two questions for
• 49:46
  Tim or Steve. First of all about propellant
• 49:49
  management, I'm curious how the cryogenic boil off matched up
• 49:52
  with your expectations and kind of how much prop you had left at
• 49:55
  the end. And then what is the transfer
• 49:58
  data transfer rate you're getting now versus what you
• 50:00
  expected? You know, trying to get some
• 50:02
  sense of how much data you're going to get back over the next
• 50:05
  week or so versus your original expectations?
• 50:08
  Thanks. Propellant.
• 50:11
  So actually the the cryogens did very well and and just a
• 50:15
  correction Eric our system doesn't really have boil off.
• 50:19
  Our tanks are rated to hold the pressure of of the methane.
• 50:22
  It's very close to space storable really what we're
• 50:25
  worried about isn't a propellant boil off it is temperature
• 50:30
  management. We want to keep that cryogenic
• 50:32
  fluid very cold because the density of that fluid in our
• 50:35
  engine is what gives us the power of of that thrust system.
• 50:38
  So really what we were looking at throughout the flight was did
• 50:43
  our insulation plan and our isolation of the the cryogenic
• 50:46
  tanks from the hot material, the spacecraft, did that give us the
• 50:49
  right thermal protection so that we did not heat, heat that cold
• 50:54
  system up and that worked very well.
• 50:56
  We found ourselves in a very good situation with propellant
• 50:59
  all the way through the mission. We did have we used a little bit
• 51:02
  more helium than we thought throughout the mission and had
• 51:05
  to adjust our our control approach for that and that was
• 51:10
  probably the area of concern we run a little bit low on on
• 51:13
  helium. So a lot of lessons learned
• 51:15
  there on how we'll manage that going forward that will play out
• 51:18
  very well. And in terms of the the
• 51:21
  bandwidth, that's difficult to answer.
• 51:23
  One of the things that's happening right now, we built
• 51:25
  fault detection technology into our COM system that if we're not
• 51:29
  getting a command heartbeat up on two of the antenna pair, it
• 51:32
  will go through a sequence of powering the radios off,
• 51:35
  restarting them. And then if they still don't get
• 51:37
  the heartbeat command signal from the from the earth, then it
• 51:40
  switches to the other antenna pair.
• 51:42
  And so one of the first things we're trying to do is get out of
• 51:44
  that flight configuration and stay locked in on 2 antennas.
• 51:48
  But with that flip flopping back and forth, right now we're we're
• 51:53
  trying to get the command up to move out of that flight mode.
• 51:56
  But there's a beat frequency of we go from a good configuration,
• 52:01
  the one that's down and then we're about to come up to the
• 52:03
  new one and we move to a new antenna.
• 52:05
  And so we're working through that.
• 52:07
  When we left to come over for the briefing, I think they just
• 52:10
  about had that solved. But I can't give you a strong
• 52:12
  number because there's a variability there as we go from
• 52:15
  different antennas to different dishes around the world.
• 52:21
  Great. Thanks again.
• 52:22
  Jeff Faust with Space News. Jeff.
• 52:26
  Good afternoon. Maybe just to quickly follow up
• 52:28
  on Eric's question for Tim. What is your best guess that how
• 52:32
  good the data rate you can eventually get once you optimize
• 52:35
  the system for the Lander and its configuration?
• 52:38
  And then also I think this question was asked.
• 52:40
  Earlier I may have missed the answer.
• 52:41
  What's your best guess in terms of margin of error of how close
• 52:44
  you are to the predicted landing site, How many kilometers away
• 52:48
  you think you touched down? Thanks.
• 52:50
  Yeah, great questions. Thanks Jeff.
• 52:53
  Best guess you know in terms of bit rate that's hard to say
• 52:56
  because that does vary with the antenna size and the sensitivity
• 53:01
  beach antenna, but we expect to get most of the mission data
• 53:04
  down once we stabilize our configuration.
• 53:07
  In terms of landing accuracy, you know with without precision
• 53:11
  navigation sensors on board the best you can expect to land on
• 53:16
  an IMU only landing system would probably be in the four to five
• 53:20
  kilometer range. However, our optical navigation
• 53:24
  sensors perform Florida State. In fact our optical measurements
• 53:29
  looked better on the scopes than they had in simulations.
• 53:32
  So I'm confident that we're well within probably a 2 to 3
• 53:36
  kilometer accuracy of the landing site for this mission
• 53:41
  would have been better if we'd had our full complement of
• 53:44
  sensors as expected. And just as a closing point,
• 53:47
  Jeff, on this question is that we're planning working with the
• 53:51
  Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Arizona State University
• 53:54
  faculty to do a pass to see if LRO can locate our position
• 54:01
  precisely and give us a latitude and longitude and we expect that
• 54:05
  measurement that pass to occur this weekend.
• 54:12
  Thank you so much for that. Joey Roulette with Reuters.
• 54:16
  Joey. Hey, thanks for doing this.
• 54:19
  Question for Tim or Steve, since the Lander is on its side, I was
• 54:23
  wondering if you could go into how that will limit what the
• 54:27
  Lander can do with you know, which operational capabilities
• 54:30
  are impacted by that and which you know, science objectives, if
• 54:34
  any won't be able to be conducted because it's on its
• 54:37
  side? Thanks.
• 54:40
  Well, I'll comment initially. Like I mentioned, we don't have
• 54:45
  active payloads on the panel EI believe is what's facing the
• 54:50
  surface of the moon and so therefore the the active
• 54:55
  payloads that need communications and need to give
• 54:58
  up, we need to command and we get the telemetry out are all
• 55:01
  exposed to the outside, which is very fortunate for us.
• 55:06
  We do have an antenna, however, that are pointed at the surface
• 55:11
  and those antennas are unusable for transmission to to Earth,
• 55:17
  back to Earth. And so that really is a limiter,
• 55:20
  our ability to communicate and get the right right data down so
• 55:25
  that you know, we get everything we need for the mission.
• 55:28
  I think it's the most compromised from being on our
• 55:30
  side. And anything I missed him?
• 55:33
  No, that was it. Well, maybe one I just thought
• 55:35
  of his. I I was telling you before about
• 55:37
  the solar panel on the top deck we had had to angle that at
• 55:42
  about 30° tilt up for for landing on the South Pole.
• 55:48
  That was one of the engineering changes we made when NASA asked
• 55:52
  us to move to the towards the South Pole region.
• 55:54
  Now we've tipped over and we don't know the health of that
• 55:57
  solar panel. It would be great to get a
• 55:59
  picture and or wait until the sun comes around and see if we
• 56:03
  get any battery charging off that solar panel.
• 56:06
  So we'll see we're in a great state of charge with the
• 56:09
  batteries. We're getting plenty of sun on
• 56:11
  the on the horizontal and now horizontal solar panel and we'll
• 56:15
  just have to wait and see with that that other panel.
• 56:19
  Thank you so much, Jonathan Surry, Fox News.
• 56:24
  Thank you for taking my question and congratulations everyone.
• 56:28
  My question is also for Tim or Steve.
• 56:31
  Your team had to essentially rewrite the instruction manual
• 56:34
  several times while in flight, not just for troubleshooting but
• 56:38
  also adapting to 1st in space performance of that new engine.
• 56:43
  Could you give us an idea of how many people were involved with
• 56:45
  the process, and did the discussions take place in a
• 56:50
  single war room, or were you conferencing in experts from
• 56:54
  multiple locations? Just give us an idea of the
• 56:57
  human logistics involved. So I'll give you a rough
• 57:00
  overview and then Tim can comment kind of how how it went
• 57:05
  over the seven day period. We the operations team was
• 57:08
  structured in into three shifts, red, white and blue shift.
• 57:13
  Those shifts were supposed to work 8 hour shifts and then do a
• 57:17
  a handover between shifts. But between those teams, those
• 57:23
  teams are about 10 individuals and the other team that we
• 57:28
  activated was called team four. And the team four was a handful
• 57:33
  of us senior leaders that and engineers that could analyze and
• 57:38
  take the workload off of the operations teams.
• 57:42
  So if the operations teams are are wrestling with a
• 57:45
  particularly thorny problem, they would call team four and
• 57:48
  say get in here and let's work on this, work on this for us and
• 57:53
  give us a a solution. So we would pull in the subject
• 57:57
  matter experts for any of the disciplines that we would need
• 58:01
  to solve any particular problem and we would work in a war room
• 58:05
  sense outside the control room to tackle that problem.
• 58:09
  We would have for example to activate and bring up the
• 58:12
  simulation or activate and bring up the flat set.
• 58:16
  We would run analysis cases. We would call the vendors like
• 58:19
  we called the MDA about the laser laser rage finders.
• 58:24
  We called NASA and talked about the Deep Space Network with that
• 58:28
  orbit determination need also all of that chatter in the back
• 58:32
  that was handled by I would say about 30 people that that would
• 58:38
  work a given problem on and off based on the on the discipline.
• 58:42
  But what had happened during the mission was that red, white and
• 58:45
  blue team and the teams and team four ended up working nearly
• 58:51
  around the clock. We really could have staffed
• 58:54
  more, but it takes a lot of expertise to staff those teams.
• 58:58
  And we ended up kind of melding into, we're all working on this
• 59:02
  last problem through power, descent and we collapsed into a
• 59:05
  single red, white and blue team, all of it.
• 59:08
  And to get that solved, which we're going to go back and look
• 59:11
  at and see, you know, we really, really work the team hard.
• 59:16
  They're put a lot of hours in. I think one of the longest days
• 59:19
  was 48 hours long and another another day was 40 hours long
• 59:23
  for some of the folks. And that's, you know, just just
• 59:26
  working too hard. And we need to give them rest so
• 59:29
  they can be bright and make the right engineering decisions.
• 59:33
  So we got some lessons learned in that area, but we did it and
• 59:37
  it was worth it. And it was a whole idea of
• 59:39
  persevering through the challenges and never giving up,
• 59:42
  Never ever give up until the last ditch solution you could
• 59:47
  find and then keep thinking about it if it didn't work.
• 59:50
  So just a testament to a great operations team.
• 59:53
  Yeah, I'll add to that. You know, our operations concept
• 59:59
  was a, a a blend of. Human spaceflight for space
• 1:00:04
  station and space shuttle, we have, you know that's in our
• 1:00:06
  culture here in the Houston area.
• 1:00:08
  Some of us had worked on the all hadamorphous project at NASA,
• 1:00:11
  which was in some way has the DNA that that led into Nova C We
• 1:00:16
  had people with a military operations background and then
• 1:00:18
  we had people from commercial network operations.
• 1:00:21
  And so we put all of that together and we came up with our
• 1:00:24
  own unique blend of how we were going to do spacecraft
• 1:00:26
  operations. And a big focus of that was the
• 1:00:29
  people inside the room on the red, white and blue teams, Keep
• 1:00:32
  the vehicle alive, keep the vehicle alive and doing what
• 1:00:35
  it's supposed to do. And then all the mission
• 1:00:38
  directors, myself, Jack 2, Fish Fisher and Trent Martin, we had
• 1:00:41
  the responsibility to interface with Team Four.
• 1:00:44
  And we would be able to say, I have this problem, I can't solve
• 1:00:47
  it with the resources I have in the room and and do what we're
• 1:00:50
  supposed to do. And so we would shed those out
• 1:00:53
  to Team Four and they did an amazing job.
• 1:00:56
  Whether it was talking to the vendors or developing a
• 1:00:59
  procedure, they took that off the plate and that load balance.
• 1:01:03
  Even though he's right, you know, I joked this morning that,
• 1:01:06
  you know, how was your day? I said, well, this mission was
• 1:01:08
  the longest seven day day of my life.
• 1:01:11
  But it it really, it really allowed us to focus on keeping
• 1:01:15
  the vehicle alive and keeping it moving on its way to the moon
• 1:01:19
  and doing the things we needed to do while problems and
• 1:01:21
  anomalies could be solved in the backroom.
• 1:01:24
  And you know, this is a story that everybody on that team is
• 1:01:28
  going to be able to tell for generations about how we landed.
• 1:01:34
  Irene Klotz, Aviation Week, your line is open.
• 1:01:39
  Thanks. If I understand that incredible
• 1:01:42
  sequence of events correctly, was it just serendipity that a
• 1:01:46
  situation developed with that elliptical orbit that caused you
• 1:01:51
  to try and get the laser range Finder data where you realized
• 1:01:57
  it wasn't working before it would have actually been needed?
• 1:02:01
  And when during the touchdown, would that laser range binder
• 1:02:07
  nominally have been activated? I think I understood Irene, the
• 1:02:17
  question. It was actually fortuitous that
• 1:02:22
  we had an elliptical orbit after lunar orbit insertion, because
• 1:02:29
  we would not have arbitrarily activated the laser range
• 1:02:33
  finders prior to power descent. We tested them on the ground, we
• 1:02:38
  flew them on aircraft, we flew them on helicopters, we and and
• 1:02:44
  we assumed after all that testing they worked.
• 1:02:48
  So the first usage of those laser range finders was during
• 1:02:52
  was supposed to be during the power descent.
• 1:02:54
  But because we had such a low parallel, we activated a laser
• 1:03:00
  and found the problem. So that was fortunate and that
• 1:03:02
  was a bit of luck for us that then we identified that they
• 1:03:06
  weren't firing. So at that point then that was
• 1:03:10
  recovered. Like I said, at the next morning
• 1:03:13
  we uncovered that and then we had to work feverishly to figure
• 1:03:18
  out an alternative solution. Anything there Tim?
• 1:03:22
  Yeah. Just the second part, Irene, to
• 1:03:23
  your question of when would they normally have come on.
• 1:03:25
  Normally we would have turned them on after deorbit insertion
• 1:03:29
  about an hour before landing. And we expected the, what we
• 1:03:32
  call the terrain relative navigation LIDAR, their laser
• 1:03:37
  range Finder that would have operated really from about 50
• 1:03:41
  kilometers altitude all the way down to landing.
• 1:03:44
  And then after pitch over, we had a laser on the other side
• 1:03:47
  that would take us from a kilometer down.
• 1:03:49
  So we would have probably been 5 minutes to landing before we
• 1:03:52
  would have realized that those lasers weren't working if we had
• 1:03:55
  not had that fortuitous event. So serendipity is absolutely the
• 1:03:59
  right word. Jackie Waddles, CNN.
• 1:04:06
  Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for doing this.
• 1:04:08
  Had a quick question for Steve or Tim.
• 1:04:12
  I know everyone's really curious about the photos here.
• 1:04:14
  So do you guys have any indication of Eagle Cam is in a
• 1:04:17
  position to pop off the Lander and take some pictures?
• 1:04:21
  And to that end, if you could just clarify for all of us, are
• 1:04:25
  there any specific payloads whether commercial or NASA?
• 1:04:28
  I know some of them are passive and you're still working on
• 1:04:32
  figure out these data down links and stuff, but are there any
• 1:04:35
  that you know for sure or just haven't gotten any data yet and
• 1:04:39
  don't know if you will get data from?
• 1:04:41
  Thanks so much. Well, fortunately again Eagle
• 1:04:47
  Cam sits on a panel. Let me show Tim if panel EI
• 1:04:59
  believe is towards the surface of the moon.
• 1:05:02
  Eagle Cam sits over here on this panel and we plan to eject that
• 1:05:07
  camera off the side, so it will fall about 30 meters or so, then
• 1:05:14
  maybe not that far away from the Lander and get a good shot of
• 1:05:17
  the Lander position this way. So we're looking to power up
• 1:05:22
  that Eagle Cam. We were waiting on getting
• 1:05:24
  commanding ability power that up, clear that SD card and fire
• 1:05:29
  the camera and so we can get a A view a back to our Lander.
• 1:05:33
  So that's a very exciting image for us.
• 1:05:36
  The reason it wasn't fired as we were landing was because of this
• 1:05:41
  NAV system initialization that we had to do which put a flag up
• 1:05:46
  to flag the Eagle Cam not to fire.
• 1:05:50
  So that was part of the troubleshooting we had to do to
• 1:05:54
  to get the Doppler LIDAR into the NAV system.
• 1:05:59
  We had to do these navigation initializations and that shut
• 1:06:02
  off the Eagle Cam and we knew that was in the software, but we
• 1:06:05
  just did not have time to go fix that.
• 1:06:07
  And so now we'll get it and get the image in the orientation
• 1:06:11
  that we need. The other question you had about
• 1:06:14
  commercial payloads, we think we can meet all of the needs and
• 1:06:20
  from the commercial payloads that we have in the orientation,
• 1:06:23
  we have the one on Panel E that's covered right now or
• 1:06:28
  shaded by the Lander and the surface is the Arc Cube project.
• 1:06:35
  And we believe we've got an image of that already that we
• 1:06:38
  can download and share with our our customer.
• 1:06:43
  I'll add that for the NASA science payloads, as we said
• 1:06:46
  earlier, the many of them have already taken a lot of data, a
• 1:06:49
  lot of measurements in transit and also on descent.
• 1:06:52
  We're still checking to see if in the current suspected
• 1:06:56
  orientation of the vehicle whether there will be any
• 1:06:59
  particular measurements that can't be made in some of the
• 1:07:02
  payloads. So, for example, we want to make
• 1:07:04
  sure that the laser retro reflectors, which are normally,
• 1:07:08
  you know, pointed up so that when the Lunar Reconnaissance
• 1:07:11
  Orbiter flies over it can pulse them with a laser beam and find
• 1:07:14
  their position. We'll have to check to make sure
• 1:07:16
  that they can still be illuminated.
• 1:07:18
  They probably can be when the orbiter's fault is flying it up
• 1:07:21
  at a further angle away on the trajectory, very similar to what
• 1:07:25
  we found with the recent slim landing from the Japanese Space
• 1:07:29
  Exploration Agency. But we are doing an assessment
• 1:07:32
  to see are there any measurements still to come that
• 1:07:34
  from any of the NASA supply payloads that most likely can't
• 1:07:38
  take place particularly because of this new orientation?
• 1:07:43
  Great. Thank you so much for that.
• 1:07:45
  Will Robinson Smith for Space Flight Space Flight now.
• 1:07:48
  Will, Yes. Hi, thanks for taking the time
• 1:07:52
  to answer our questions here. One for Joel and for Sun.
• 1:07:57
  If I could, given the success and now the operability of the
• 1:08:04
  NDL, will that become AI guess highly recommended or required
• 1:08:10
  payload on future eclipse missions?
• 1:08:13
  And what are the potential implications or or knock on
• 1:08:17
  effect for the human landing system Landers?
• 1:08:20
  Will NASA recommend that Blue Origin and SpaceX implement that
• 1:08:24
  into their landing systems? Thanks.
• 1:08:27
  I'll take a, I'll take a shot for Sun, but please please add.
• 1:08:31
  So for a commercial lunar payload services initiative, we
• 1:08:34
  don't prescribe to the company partners that are doing this as
• 1:08:38
  a service, you know what techniques or technologies they
• 1:08:40
  use. But as you can imagine all these
• 1:08:43
  different companies are always looking for low risk, good
• 1:08:47
  performance ways to gather the data or conduct the operations
• 1:08:50
  that they are going to conduct for NASA.
• 1:08:53
  So we I'm sure that the story as you can tell now is very public
• 1:08:57
  about about things like the performance of the NDL.
• 1:09:01
  And we would think that people that are looking at lunar
• 1:09:04
  Landers would be checking into that technology.
• 1:09:06
  Now that it's actually been flight proven operationally on
• 1:09:09
  probably the an unanticipated flight test mission, right,
• 1:09:14
  actually use it operationally. I would say the same thing.
• 1:09:17
  You know, the human Lander system partners have their own
• 1:09:20
  techniques and their own approaches that they're taking.
• 1:09:23
  But again, now that this has been actually shown to
• 1:09:25
  operationally work, I would think it's going to be of great
• 1:09:28
  interest to folks that want to travel to the moon first time.
• 1:09:31
  Yeah, I will add, you know, we've actually did.
• 1:09:34
  NASA has already licensed this technology to a small company to
• 1:09:37
  commercially provide this to whoever wants to buy it, right.
• 1:09:41
  And so this only adds more validation of the system.
• 1:09:46
  There's just a technical reason to add it right beyond the
• 1:09:49
  aspects that Joel talked about because it is an order of
• 1:09:52
  magnitude more accurate in precision and measurement of
• 1:09:57
  range and velocity components. It's half the power, half the
• 1:10:01
  mass of the traditional approaches that we've used in
• 1:10:04
  the past and the volume in terms of signs is about 1/3 of it.
• 1:10:08
  So if you just look at it from a technical perspective, it just
• 1:10:12
  provides all these benefits. And so I'm sure future vendors
• 1:10:17
  will look at this type of capability anew and and try to
• 1:10:23
  incorporate these types of technologies.
• 1:10:24
  And that's why we're doing these missions right, is to develop
• 1:10:29
  better and better capable systems that allow us to do this
• 1:10:32
  more reliably, more capably and hopefully more sustainably and
• 1:10:36
  more cost efficient wise. So in fact, after the landing, I
• 1:10:40
  did joke with Steve there, it's like, hey, now Are you ready for
• 1:10:44
  I Am 2 because we have 3 payloads already ready to go on
• 1:10:47
  I am two, right. And so we're ready to
• 1:10:50
  demonstrate even more stuff that will help the greater space
• 1:10:54
  economy that burgeoning in here in the US and and we just want
• 1:10:59
  to augment that as much as possible we can with what we're
• 1:11:01
  doing. Yeah, I'll chime in as well.
• 1:11:04
  You know, as you look forward to future emissions and as we begin
• 1:11:08
  delivering cargo emissions with a metric ton and more, you know
• 1:11:11
  those those payloads get more and more valuable.
• 1:11:14
  And as those payloads get more and more valuable, we're going
• 1:11:16
  to have to prove to our customers that we have
• 1:11:17
  robustness in our landing systems.
• 1:11:19
  One of the ways you achieve robustness is with redundancy or
• 1:11:22
  with the similar redundancy. So having two ways of measuring
• 1:11:25
  that landing. We had a camera system on board,
• 1:11:27
  but if you have a camera system and a laser system, one might
• 1:11:31
  fail in a way that the other one might not.
• 1:11:33
  And so I can see that as the lunar economy opens up, as NASA
• 1:11:37
  begins to send cargo and larger, more expensive payloads with
• 1:11:40
  companies like ours and others, that you're going to see demand
• 1:11:44
  for these kind of sensors complementing a suite of sensors
• 1:11:48
  that you use to guarantee safe landing is going to be something
• 1:11:50
  that that will be an industry standard.
• 1:11:54
  Thank you for that. We are going to try and take two
• 1:11:56
  more questions. So I'm going to ask you guys to
• 1:11:59
  be brief in your remarks so we can get the get through these
• 1:12:01
  questions. First up, we have Marsha Smith
• 1:12:04
  with spacepolicyonline.com. Marsha.
• 1:12:08
  Thanks so much. Getting back to the
• 1:12:11
  communications question, I gather that part of the
• 1:12:14
  challenge is that you have so many different sites around the
• 1:12:16
  world with different capabilities.
• 1:12:19
  But I know that you would talk before you launched about the
• 1:12:22
  challenges of communicating at the South Pole.
• 1:12:25
  But how much of the calm problems are related to the
• 1:12:27
  ground stations and how much to the place where you are on the
• 1:12:31
  moon? And what lessons are you going
• 1:12:33
  to learn from all of this for the Artemis missions?
• 1:12:39
  Well, yeah, I'll answer some of that question.
• 1:12:44
  What you get is a phenomenon at the South Pole that NASA is
• 1:12:47
  interested in understanding since that's where our future
• 1:12:51
  Artemis missions are targeted or NASA's future Artemis missions
• 1:12:56
  are targeted is a is a frequency multi path condition and so are
• 1:13:04
  you going to get multi path interference on your
• 1:13:07
  communication frequencies? Fortunately we think the
• 1:13:10
  antennas that are pointed towards the moon will give us a
• 1:13:13
  really good understanding of that phenomenon at the South
• 1:13:17
  Pole. Another serendipitous moment,
• 1:13:20
  right? But I would say that we thought
• 1:13:24
  about this landing on the South Pole quite a bit and if you look
• 1:13:27
  at the mock of all the antennas are up high and pointed like we
• 1:13:31
  like towards Earth. When you're sitting on on the
• 1:13:35
  surface of the Moon in transit, it's very difficult.
• 1:13:38
  You have to constantly change your attitude to point the
• 1:13:41
  antennas back to Earth when you're headed to the Moon.
• 1:13:44
  So we're going to figure out an antenna location map for
• 1:13:49
  subsequent missions and even mission two that gives us an
• 1:13:53
  antenna pointed back at the Earth when we're flying out
• 1:13:55
  towards the towards the Moon for sure.
• 1:13:58
  Also in this first ever use of our lunar data network, of this
• 1:14:04
  commercially now available data network made-up of these large
• 1:14:09
  radio astronomy dishes that we've stitched together in a
• 1:14:13
  network. Some of those dishes have had
• 1:14:18
  have had configuration issues. Some of those dishes have had a
• 1:14:21
  weaker power band. So we can all operate on this
• 1:14:26
  frequency S band set of frequencies.
• 1:14:30
  However, the power to reach the moon is what came into account
• 1:14:34
  as we went around and out towards the moon.
• 1:14:38
  The further we got, the some of the times those power
• 1:14:42
  transmission levels were too low to have us keep the carrier
• 1:14:46
  locked, locked up on the radios. So that was some of the
• 1:14:51
  challenges and that's what we're looking for going forward is to
• 1:14:54
  really regularize that lunar data network so that
• 1:14:59
  operationally we know the configuration we can go upgrade
• 1:15:03
  to put additional orbit determination capabilities
• 1:15:07
  within our baseband units at each antenna site.
• 1:15:10
  And and the best thing will be when we get our data relay
• 1:15:13
  satellites in orbit, we'll have that problem licked and we can
• 1:15:19
  communicate short distance from the surface up to a satellite
• 1:15:22
  and relay that back to Earth in a in a in a more traditional
• 1:15:26
  way. So looking forward to those
• 1:15:27
  advances in the communication system.
• 1:15:31
  Thank you. And we have one last question we
• 1:15:33
  can take this afternoon with Adam Mann from Science.
• 1:15:36
  Adam. Hi there, I'm with Science News
• 1:15:42
  actually and I guess this is for the Intuitive machines folks.
• 1:15:46
  I'm wondering maybe you've answered this already, but I'm
• 1:15:48
  just wondering if you have any idea how long OD might be able
• 1:15:53
  to stay operational on lunar surface.
• 1:15:57
  Well, it's a great question and and you're going to bring a tear
• 1:15:59
  to my eye. We know at at this landing site
• 1:16:03
  the sun will move beyond our solar arrays in any
• 1:16:07
  configuration in approximately 9 days.
• 1:16:10
  And so the early missions are all solar powered and require
• 1:16:15
  that. And then once the sun sets on on
• 1:16:18
  OD, the batteries will attempt to keep the vehicle warm and
• 1:16:23
  alive, but eventually it'll fall into a deep cold.
• 1:16:26
  And then the electronics that we produce just won't survive the
• 1:16:31
  deep cold of lunar night. And so, best case scenario,
• 1:16:35
  we're we're looking at another nine to 10 days.
• 1:16:37
  And then we will, of course, the next time the sun illuminates
• 1:16:42
  the solar arrays, we'll turn our dishes to the moon, just to see
• 1:16:45
  if the radios and the batteries in the flight computer survive
• 1:16:48
  that deep cold. The solar array should, they
• 1:16:51
  should survive the deep cold and provide power, but we'll just
• 1:16:54
  see if our electronics made it through.
• 1:16:55
  We'll take a look, we'll take a listen.
• 1:16:57
  By that time we'll have gotten very, very good at at listening
• 1:17:00
  to that signal, but we do expect probably a maximum of another
• 1:17:04
  nine to 10 days. Thank you so much, Tim, and
• 1:17:08
  thank you to everyone who submitted questions this
• 1:17:11
  afternoon. And thank you to our briefers
• 1:17:14
  for taking the time to discuss this historic mission enabled by
• 1:17:17
  the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services or Eclipse
• 1:17:21
  Initiative. We hope you'll continue to
• 1:17:24
  follow along on this mission by keeping track on Intuitive
• 1:17:27
  Machines's website and on nasa.gov/CLPS that will wrap
• 1:17:34
  today's briefing. Thank you so much.