Intuitive Machines shares fell more than 30% after hours Friday, after the space exploration company said its Odysseus lunar lander had fallen on its side as it landed near the Moon’s south pole, hampering the its communications with Earth.
Intuitive LUNR machines,
CEO Steve Altemus said Friday that Ulysses “has put one foot on the surface [of the moon] and rolled over” on its side as it hit the ground Thursday, according to the Associated Press.
While the spacecraft still has “quite a bit of operational capability,” Altemus said some of its antennas were pointed at the lunar surface, limiting its ability to communicate with flight controllers and transmit data. He said the lander may have broken one of its six legs after descending too quickly, and was now perhaps resting on a rock.
The news sent shares of Houston-based Intuitive Machines plunging 31.7% after the close, after they had gained 15.8% in regular trading Friday in the wake of the Odysseus landing. Initially the company had he said the spacecraft was upright Thursday, when it became the first commercial lander to successfully reach the Moon, though the extent of that success may now be in doubt given the mission’s complications.
Odysseus – also the first American spacecraft to reach the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972 – carries scientific and technological instruments on behalf of NASA. The space agency is sponsoring and supporting the mission, launched Feb. 15, with the goal of returning astronauts to the Moon by 2026 through its Artemis program.
Other commercial Moon landing attempts have also run into problems in recent years. In 2019, Israel’s Beresheet attempted to become the first private lander on the lunar surface, but crashed during the landing attempt. Four years later, the private Japanese mission Hakuto-R also failed to achieve a “soft landing” on the Moon.
Last month, US-based private space company Astrobotic Technology ended its troubled mission to place its Peregrine lander on the moon.