Odysseus lander shown touching down on moon with broken leg in dramatic new pictures
Dramatic new images have been released of the Odysseus spacecraft landing on the moon.
The pictures, along with huge amounts of data, have been downloaded just hours before night falls at the lunar south pole and the lander’s batteries run out of power.
Intuitive Machines, the US company behind the mission, said it will now be possible to reconstruct the landing to understand how Odysseus came to rest on its side.
The Odysseus lander on its side with a crater around 500m away. Pic: Intuitive Machines/NASA
The company also revealed the lander could be revived in 2-3 weeks’ time when the sun rises again. The big unknown is whether the batteries and electronics can survive temperatures that dip below -200C (-328F).
“There are no eulogies planned. Only celebrations,” company co-founder Steve Altemus told a news conference in Houston, Texas.
The first of the new images, taken as the lander touched down, shows at least one of its legs had been shattered, with rocks and dust being blown away at high speed by the force of the rocket engine.
A second photo shows the lander on its side with the dark elliptical shape of a crater around 500m (1,640ft) away. Scientists believe the crater could be two billion years old.
Telemetry data shows Odysseus originally landed upright, but then toppled over on a slight slope.
In the low lunar gravity, it took around two seconds for it to come to rest, either on its fuel tank or a computer shelf on the outside of its structure.
A fisheye lens view of the Odysseus spacecraft on the moon. Pic: Intuitive Machines/NASA
Intuitive Machines was paid $118m (£94m) by NASA to take six scientific instruments to the moon.
All have sent back data, despite the lander’s position, and a navigation beacon is now operational that will help future landings.
But the laser navigation system that should have been used for the landing failed because a pin hadn’t been removed on the launch pad in Florida.
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Odysseus moon mission explained
“Clearly, it’s something we can fix next time,” Mr Altemus said.
The company has been under pressure to explain why the landing wasn’t perfect, when the far simpler Apollo spacecraft successfully touched down six times in the 1960s and 70s.
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Mr Altemus said: “We had a different kind of challenge. We were constrained on cost, with a fixed price contract from the government.
“We had a schedule to get this mission completed in the time it takes to get an undergraduate degree. This over-constrained environment forced innovation and this was our first flight of this vehicle.”
In a joint news conference, Intuitive Machines and NASA gave an upbeat assessment of the mission so far.
Dr Joel Kerans, of NASA, said the mission had been a “pathfinder, a first step to get back to the moon. There will be a lot of learning that comes out of it”.
Intuitive Machines is planning a second mission later this year that will carry a drill to hunt for water below the surface of the moon. It will also have a ‘space hopper’ that will fly into deeply shadowed craters where scientists believe there could be large amounts of ice.
A man has pleaded guilty to murdering four University of Idaho students in November 2022.
Bryan Kohberger, a 30-year-old former criminal justice student, was arrested at his parents’ home in Pennsylvania weeks after the killings.
He was accused of sneaking into the rented home in Moscow, Idaho, which is not far from the university campus, and attacking Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves.
Kohberger previously pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and burglary.
It comes after he agreed to a plea deal, just weeks before his trial was set to begin, in a bid to avoid the death penalty.
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Bryan Kohberger during a hearing in Latah County District Court in Moscow, Idaho. Pic: Reuters
Kaylee Goncalves, Maddie Mogen and Xana Kernodle, and Xana’s boyfriend Ethan Chapin
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It is certainly big – 940 pages long – but on the question of beauty, Congress is divided.
Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” has sparked ugly debate – both for its ambitious scope and for the political manoeuvring that’s gone on around it.
Elon Musk branded it “political suicide” for Republicans and threatened to fund challenges against those who back it in next year’s midterm elections.
But the president hit back, suggesting he would consider cutting Musk’s lucrative government contracts or even deporting him back to South Africa.
The “big, beautiful bill”, or HR 1 to give the proposed legislation its proper title, is Mr Trump’s signature spending and tax policy.
It extends tax cuts he secured in 2017 and bankrolls his second-term agenda in the White House.
File pic: Reuters
Here is a summary of the key points:
• Permanent tax cuts: Extending relief from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
• Small business support: Doubling the small business expensing limit to $2.5m (£1.8m) to help businesses expand and hire staff
• Child tax credit: Expanding the child tax credit and making it permanent, benefiting 40 million families
• Making housing affordable: Expanding the low-income housing tax credit to kickstart construction of affordable homes
• Defence and border security: Allocating $170bn (£123bn) for border security alone, including $46bn (£33bn) for completing the border wall
• Made-in-America incentives: Providing tax breaks and incentives for domestic manufacturing to promote US industry
• Healthcare and social welfare: Implementing restrictions on Medicaid, which provides healthcare for millions of Americans, and reducing funding for certain healthcare and nutrition programmes.
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Clash over ‘monster’ debt bill
Musk, Mr Trump’s former ally and the man who established the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), claimed the bill “raises the debt ceiling by $5trn, the biggest increase in history.”
“DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon,” was President Trump’s response.
The national debt currently stands at $37trn (£27trn) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the bill could add $2.4trn (£1.7trn) to that over the next decade.
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Trump threatens to ‘put DOGE’ on Musk
Bill splits Republican ranks
Republican Senator Thom Tillis voted against the bill and, following criticism from the president, announced he would not seek re-election in North Carolina.
He said he couldn’t support it due to his concerns about the impact cuts to Medicaid would have on people in his state.
Democrats in the Senate forced a full reading of all 940 pages and then a vote-a-rama, a series of marathon voting sessions.
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In the House of Representatives, it passed by a single vote, 215-214. In the Senate, Vice President JD Vance, had to cast the deciding vote to break a tie (50-50).
Legislatively, the progress of the bill has been a case study in the complexities of American law-making.
Strategically, it represents a mammoth effort to consolidate the president’s policy agenda and secure his legacy.
In the long Gaza war, this is a significant moment.
For the people of Gaza, for the Israeli hostages and their families – this could be the moment it ends. But we have been here before, so many times.
The key question – will Hamas accept what Israel has agreed to: a 60-day ceasefire?
At the weekend, a source at the heart of the negotiations told me: “Both Hamas and Israel are refusing to budge from their position – Hamas wants the ceasefire to last until a permanent agreement is reached.
“Israel is opposed to this. At this point, only President Trump can break this deadlock.”
The source added: “Unless Trump pushes, we are in a stalemate.”
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Will Trump achieve a Gaza ceasefire?
The problem is that the announcement made now by Donald Trump – which is his social-media-summarised version of whatever Israel has actually agreed to – may just amount to Israel’s already-established position.
We don’t know the details and conditions attached to Israel’s proposals.
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Would Israeli troops withdraw from Gaza? Totally? Or partially? How many Palestinian prisoners would they agree to release from Israel’s jails? And why only 60 days? Why not a total ceasefire? What are they asking of Hamas in return?
We just don’t know the answers to any of these questions, except one.
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Dozens killed at beachfront cafe in Gaza
We do know why Israel wants a 60-day ceasefire, not a permanent one. It’s all about domestic politics.
If Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were to agree now to a permanent ceasefire, the extreme right-wingers in his coalition would collapse his government.
Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have both been clear about their desire for the war to continue. They hold the balance of power in Mr Netanyahu’s coalition.
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If Mr Netanyahu instead agrees to just 60 days – which domestically he can sell as just a pause – then that may placate the extreme right-wingers for a few weeks until the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, is adjourned for the summer.
It is also no coincidence that the US president has called for Mr Netanyahu’s corruption trial to be scrapped.
Without the prospect of jail, Mr Netanyahu might be more willing to quit the war, safe in the knowledge that focus will not shift immediately to his own political and legal vulnerability.
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