And while she’s lying on one side with a broken leg, telemetry is being received and it is continuing to function. As I record, the team are entering their sixth day of the eight-day mission of providing NASA valuable scientific data.
An analysis of the decent flight path has revealed that the one-meter-per-second landing with laser range-finding was actually three times faster with optical cameras used for altitude and velocity telemetry. This meant the soft landing was a little harder than planned which caused sideways movement of the craft, leading to a skid, the broken leg and the tip over.
It’s believed Odysseus is resting on one of it’s yellow helium pressure tanks at a thirty degree angle to the surface and due to that positioning, the solar panels will soon lose sight of the sun and the batteries will drain. Before then the robot is expected to enter hibernation and engineers will attempt to revive the craft in mid-March when the Sun dawns once again.
