Toppled lander cuts CU experiment short
Spacecraft lands on the moon for the first time in more than 50 years
The unexpected sideways landing of a U.S. lunar spacecraft Thursday cut short multiple NASA experiments, including one conducted by the University of Colorado Boulder.
CU Boulder helped build an instrument called the Radio wave Observations at the Lunar Surface of the photo Electron Sheath. ROLSES was created to collect data about electrical charges scientists suspect hover above the moon’s surface and radio waves coming from around the Earth.
Jack Burns, CU Boulder astrophysicist and co-investigator on the ROLSES instrument, said the mission was intended to collect eight days’ worth of data. On Tuesday, which will be about three days short of the full mission, the lander was expected to run out of power.
“Having toppled over and only gotten a small fraction of the data is disappointing, but it’s also a triumph in that we finally made it to the moon,” Burns said.
The toppled lander, Odysseus, is the first U.S. spacecraft to land on the moon in more than 50 years. The lander came in too fast and one of its landing legs tripped on the surface of the moon, causing it to topple over sideways. The lander can continue to collect data as long as sunlight continues to shine on its solar panels.
“We think that we’re going to be getting more data (Tuesday) as well before the lander finally runs out of power,” Burns said. “We don’t know how much data.”
The amount of data collected will determine how many of their goals they can accomplish.
“Obviously, we weren’t able to do everything we were expecting because we were hoping to have eight days of data,” he said.
Joshua Hibbard, a CU Boulder graduate student studying astrophysics and cosmology, said it’s amazing they’re still able to take data.
“I still think it’s so incredible that it was a soft landing on the moon, and it was a privilege and honor to be part of this lunar landing that’s the first in 50 years, almost two generations,” Hibbard said.
Now, Hibbard said, he’s waiting to see how much longer the lander will be on and see how much data they’ll collect. In the next couple of weeks, he hopes to
begin analyzing and modeling the data.
“It’s great that we’ve managed to deploy and get data at all, and this is exciting stuff,” Hibbard said. “It’s beginning to peer into one of the last unknown windows of the universe and every time we turn on new telescopes (or instruments) we learn something new that surprises us.”
Even though the mission didn’t go as expected, Burns said, the instrument itself performed well.
“It made it to the moon, it turned on, it deployed the antennas, and so we sort of declared victory there as a new era of radio astronomy on the moon,” Burns said.
The ROLSES project has been in the works for the past seven years and in the building process for four to five years. Next, Burns said, he’s looking forward to the already funded and manifested ROLSES 2 in 2026. ROLSES 2 will be an upgraded instrument with more capability than ROLSES 1. Any lessons learned on how to improve ROLSES 1 will be applied to ROLSES 2, which will have similar goals as the first instrument.
CU Boulder will also be involved in Lusee-night, a pathfinder that will seek to understand the moon’s radio environment and observe sensitive radio waves from the Dark Ages of the universe for the first time.
The Dark Ages was a phase of the early universe when it was blanketed in darkness.
“We’re looking forward to a second chance to gain some data from the moon,” Burns said, adding, “this is just the start.”