Substance and Spectacle

Seeing is believing, and the right images - when they truthfully represent progress - can change the world.

Earlier this week, the Intuitive Machines lander IM-1 “Odysseus” touched down on the surface of the Moon. Despite an instrument failure of its laser rangefinder, worked around with a hasty software patch and one of the on-board experiments stepping in to provide equivalent data, the landing appeared to go well. However, on landing it was slow to contact the ground, it’s signal was weak, and it turned out the lander had fallen over. Thankfully, it still had power and communications, and the experiments on the now upper side of the lander were able to function. A partial success.

News conference after the landing. Credit: NASA

I had hoped for this article to have some fantastic images to show. Aboard Odysseus there was a payload called Eaglecam. This is a small, 5kg camera that is ejected before landing in order to take a third-person shot of Odysseus as it touched down. There isn’t a huge amount of scientific merit to it - there are cameras on the lander itself which will are designed sp…