Leaning on its side in the fading sunlight near the Moon's south pole, the first commercial spacecraft to soft-land on the Moon is about to die. Mission controllers expect the Odysseus lander to lose power sometime on 28 February, six days after it touched down. They will try to wake Odysseus again in about three weeks, when the Sun is overhead and shining light onto its solar panels. Chances are low that it will survive the freezing lunar night, although a Japanese lander unexpectedly did so, waking up earlier this week. Space experts say that Odysseus, built by Intuitive Machines of Houston, Texas, counts as a success in the fledgling business of commercial lunar exploration. It is also the first US spacecraft to land on the Moon in more than half a century. All 12 of its payloads made it to the lunar surface, including six from NASA. Five of those NASA instruments have gathered scientific data, including measurements of radiofrequency interference leaking from Earth. The sixth, a...
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