These 2 failures could have been easily avoidable both times.
I really wish there was a push in the US government to create and stockpile plutonium-238 and ensure it's readily available, subsidized, and offered for all US probes/rovers/other scientific instruments in space (whether it be for NASA's use who currently has to ration because of how little they have left, or for private use after approval).
Like, why aren't all of space scientific instruments RTG powered like voyager 1 which is still providing useful scientific data 47+ years later. Think about all of the lost scientific insights over the past few decades because either NASA (because of a low stockpile) or private companies like intuitive (from their 2 failures) end up choosing solar panels for their source of power with no other alternative.
Besides the fact that solar panels can fail if they aren't pointed a certain way, they usually offer far less power, and are subject to radiation, micro meteor, or dust damage. All of these are the main reason why these instruments tend to have a far shorter lifespan than voyager 1.
One reason all space scientific instruments are not powered by RTGs is that prior to each launch NASA has to run a very involved and time-consuming risk analysis program to determine just how much of the state of Florida becomes uninhabitable for the next 10,000 years if the rocket blows up on the launch pad.
I had a Look Magazine cover from the early 1950s .. It showed oil barrels full of radioactive waste, with a guy moving one on a handcart, with heavy gloves on! The point of the photo was "radioactive material must be handled very carefully" .. the guy had thick gloves .. for a fifty gallon drum of radioactive waste, among many of them.. Things change
Generally I agree, but Moon is not a bad place for solar panels if a spacecraft has no contingencies and is able to harvest energy during Moon's day and store it in batteries to be used over the night. The sufficient power can be generated by a solar panel of the size (or even smaller) of the spacecraft itself. The other story is for missions like Juno [1] or Europa Clipper [2] which use solar panels near Jupiter - instead of centering develoment and mass budget around payload most of the spacecraft is an enourmously sized solar array. Juno panels generate 14kW on Earth orbit and only 500W near Jupiter [1].
Another non-obvious problem is that RTGs, as any other thermal machines, need a gradient of temperature to work, i.e. to generate electrical power there should be hot (nuclear material) and cold (radiators) side. On interplanetary spacecraft (Voyager, New horizons) Sun is in a predictable (and stable) direction so RTG's radiators can be put in a permanent shadow of the spacecraft. On the Moon the sun is moving, and there is no atmosphere (unlike on Mars where RTGs are used), so on a small spacecraft RTG will need to be dug deep into the regolith which is absoluteky non-trivial since just landing straight sometimes is a problem.
There are always tradeoffs, it is almost never "why don't they just" case in spacecraft development.
It was my understanding that RTGs are relatively dense compared to their energy output. They made sense for Voyager because incident light from the sun falls off as the square of the distance and they were designed to be the farthest-away man-made objects ever.
But if you "just" want to put a probe on the moon, solar panels weigh less than plutonium.
Historically, PU-238 was a byproduct of (fissile) Pu-238 production for nuclear weapons. That need kinda went away with arms reduction treaties beginning in the mid-to-late Cold War. IIRC the US nuclear weapons stockpile is about 10% of what it was at its peak. AFAIK there is no current Pu-239 production in the US.
The need for Pu-238 was recognized years ago as the stockpile of consumed by various space probes and I believe Oak Ridge now products Pu-238 fuel pellets. I'm not sure if this production could be ramped up.
But Plutonium use has various risks associated with it. Aside from the obvious security risks, you're strapped it to a rocket that may explode while launch and come back to Earth. This is effectively a dirty bomb if the RTG containment is breached.
Solar panels are really the right choice for anything out to at least mars. Here we had a probe fall over. Would that be recoverable with RTG? Maybe. Maybe not.
As with everything in aerospace, the reason is a trade-off you are unaware of.
In order to launch an RTG you need to abide to extensive compliance requirements that ensure no ball of plutonium lands in someone's head. Ergo weight. In space, weight is everything.
You are one internet search away from finding the specific power of RTGs and of solar panels on the moon.
That's great but I'm reasonably confident that if the probe ends up sideways, at least half of the science instruments won't work anyway. And no guarantee on communications either.
It's not just the center of gravity. I think people really underestimate how hard landing on the Moon is, because counter-intuitively, the lack of an atmosphere makes things harder, not easier. Landing on Mars (or even Venus (!!) - which is the first other planet we ever landed on) is easy mode by comparison.
With the lack of atmosphere is that there is no 'natural' attitude/orientation correction. If you're tilted 5 degrees then you'll stay that way. With an atmosphere drag and aerodynamic forces can be used to ensure a proper orientation.
'Just make sure you come down straight' isn't so easy because when you enter the Moon's 'orbit' (not necessary, speaking colloquially) you're traveling extremely fast. And so to land you need to zero out your horizontal and vertical velocities. You do this by literally turning around the opposite direction and thrusting. And then you need to simultaneously also ensure your vertical velocity stays near zero as you approach the surface.
And then finally you need to come down with your vertical velocity at near zero, your horizontal velocity at zero, and perfectly orientated. This is really friggin hard. If you have even a hair of velocity you're going to bounce, skid, and otherwise do nasty things - which is why so many landers end up on their side, if not upside down. And then there's the Moon's surface itself. Come in on an even slightly unlevel terrain and again you're in for a wild ride.
A bit of Kerbal Space Program really makes you appreciate what an ordeal a satellite landing is. And that is a much simplified setting with e.g., no control lag (even on unmanned crafts), a much closer satellite, etc.
Even just designing a craft that will not topple once landed is punishing.
Mongol spacecraft do tend to have a rather high center of gravity, but they land with sufficient velocity to imbed the landing spire of their spear-like ships deep into the crust for stability and dramatic effect.
To paraphrase one of my favorite historians - Every sweeping historical generalization has a "probably doesn't apply to the Monguls" exception. If you don't expect your professor to waste chalk writing this over and over, then he won't grade you down for omitting it from your test answers and term paper.
Yes, this is why they did a similar thing with Ukraine (Feb/everything is frozen - for those who haven't been in frozen countries in the Winter, the earth/ground/dirt (pick your word) becomes hard like cement)).
> 2. Make sure your robotic lunar lander has a low center of gravity.
Also, make sure your robotic private spacecraft doesn't land on the edge of a crater. Or partly on a big rock. Or where a rock or ledge is high enough between the legs to reach the rest of the craft.
Magnitude of gravity changes nothing as long as it’s not 0. Your CG is either inside the area covered by the hull of your leg contact points or it’s not. It won’t be stable in other regimes just because gravity is lower.
Kind of passed over in the discussion of the science and toppling - but did they give any idea why it landed 250 miles from its intended landing site? Seems like a really large error?
> HOUSTON, TX – March 7, 2025 – Intuitive Machines, Inc. (Nasdaq: LUNR, LUNRW) (“Intuitive Machines”) (“Company”), a leading space exploration, infrastructure, and services company, has announced the IM-2 mission lunar lander, Athena, landed 250 meters from its intended landing site in the Mons Mouton region of the lunar south pole, inside of a crater.
It's also somewhat funny that this mission update is written in the style of a press releases, mentioning that stock ticker and an obligatory paragraph about forward-looking statements, whereas others are just a normal update.
Apollo 14 and 12 achieved 30 meters and 163 meters with human piloting, respectively, and that's after the program made precision landing a high-effort mission goal. The automated missions of the 60s-70s were often off target by a kilometre or more, but Surveyor 3 came in within 200 meters as well in '67.
Japan did a mission in 2024 with the express purpose of achieving automated precision landing - SLIM, nicknamed "Moon Sniper" - and hit 55 meters off center of a 100-by-100 elipse despite losing a main engine nozzle during descent (but also landed on its side, bummer). 50-150 meters is what the Chinese missions in the 2010s generally managed to do at times as well. I think Chang'e 5 (2020) holds the present record at within 10 meters.
> “the most southernmost lunar landing and surface operations ever achieved”.
> “This area has been avoided due to its rugged terrain and Intuitive Machines believes the insights and achievements from IM-2 will open this region for further space exploration.”
I wonder if this 250 mile error is why they ended so far south in the first place.
As I recall, Apollo 11 was off by 4 miles downrange, which was considered good but not precise. More work on the guidance / navigation system allowed for a precision landing in Apollo 12 (to touch down near a Surveyor probe).
At one point during its transit the spacecraft will have been going about 23,000 miles per hour, suddenly 250 miles doesn't seem like much. Though obviously that's in the middle of the trip and plenty of things happen between the transit between the earth and moon and landing.
Which gives me great amusement about the current human spaceflight plan to land upright Starship on the moon, and lower astronauts from the top of what is effectively a tower-like 13-story building (52.1m without landing legs, at 9m tube width) using some kind of elevator solution. To put things into perspective, this is roughly the same height as the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and with landing legs extended probably about the same width as well.
Sure, there's lots of details to consider, e.g. center of gravity, overall weight, maximum possible duration to hover and ability to accurately steer and pick your landing spot. But the inherent difficulty in "how do you not topple over" is definitely there, and it's clear the proposed Starship lander will have to outperform these IM landers significantly.
That said, if you want to scale out payload to the surface I guess you have to (which however eats into your center of gravity advantages from having lots of engines at the bottom, too).
At least they're likely to do unmanned test landings until they successfully land upright. But it seems nobody followed the design of the appollo lander, except the Blue ghost which landed successfully last week.
If they can control the angle of each leg with enough precision, that might be enough to compensate for (slightly) uneven terrain.
I understand that the recently successful Blue Ghost has sensors to detect suitability of the landing spot, and used it to re-position twice while landing. Starship would probably need something like that, too.
with enough energy(like starship would have), i suppose you could get out of
an irrecoverable tipping over motion by just lighting the engines and trying again. Before you fall, obviously. "works in KSP"^TM
Projectile grappling-hooks to embed into nearby ground then winch the line taught? Just have to make sure all are launched at the same time with force vectors that cancel out. Maybe even launch them before touchdown so it doesn't topple over during landing if one of the feet land on a random rock.
Starship is simply due to the desire to have a Sci-Fi looking ship land on a planet. It’s not being done for practical reasons. It’s being done because it looks cool.
To learn more about the strategy for landing on the moon, listen to this audiobook. Extremely good.
The craft that tipped over last year (Odysseus) was also made by Intuitive Machines (IM).
Firefly's Blue Ghost landed on the moon last week without tipping over, proving that a modern commercial company can do it.
Kind of embarrassing for IM which is 0 for 2. I'm sure there are all kinds of reasons/excuses for why IM's landers fell over and I'm sure their mission profiles are different from Firefly's, but from a high level perspective I'm sure senior leaders at NASA are reconsidering giving any new contracts to IM.
Yeah, was cool to see Blue Ghost be successful. And do the point about tall and thin, the Blue Ghost lander is much more squat than the Intuitive Machines landers
> I'm sure senior leaders at NASA are reconsidering giving any new contracts to IM.
at NASA, and DOGE, when they catch wind of it
bagholders on reddit trying to understand the 50% drop have not been open to anything rational that explains the 50% drop
so far I've gotten "You are blinded by dumb hate." for pointing out that $LUNR's unintuitive machines getting contracts from Nasa are their only business plan, as if this is a partisan thing
Dimensions shown appear to be <inches> [ <millimeters> ] - the bulk of the space is a cylinder with a radius of "180.020 [ 4572.5011 ]" which I read as just over 4.5 meters in diameter; the cylindrical part is just over 6.6 meters high (and then you get into the conical section at the nose).
The space inside the fairing is bigger than this but there is empty space between it and the payload to ensure they don't come into contact due to vibrations, etc., during launch.
So IM-1 could well have been wider and shorter and still fit on the F9.
The guys designing this never played kerbal space program or something. My first mun lander looked like theirs and of course it fell over after landing. If something doesn’t work in KSP, it probably deserves a looking at in the real world.
That doesn't look space constrained to me. The core looks like it would almost fit on it's side without modification, "just" move a few things around so it's flat and wide instead of tall and thin.
Nova-C (Intuitive Machine's platform) is 3x2x2 meters, and fits in a Falcon 9. Blue Ghost is 2x3x3 meters, and fits in the same fairing.
Here's a comparison (note that the Blue Ghost platform is currently the only one to succeed at it's intended mission, though IM1 did technically land safely but sideways):
See also the section "uprighting", further down the page - they used a tetrahedral shell with a sensor so it knew which side was down and could lever itself upright.
that ball would bounce for a long time and roll for a while until stopping, and unfolding into tetrahedral hemisegments, each in its desired orientation.
Crabs cook well, but do not fly well,not drop in the vacuum of space well. But by no means dismiss this idea. It is interesting, I just do not know how right now. Their exoskelton legs. If the craft rotated like a cat,and landed like one with a dozen crab legs...where is Adam Savage when you need him?
Not being critical here, just a question from my curious naivety (lunar exploration is hard): these landers seem spindly and unforgiving, landing-wise. Are there bouncy ball type craft that could be made, or something that can reorient or push itself up after landing? I have a vague memory of something like that being used on Mars.
Yep, most of the previous Mars rover prior to Curiosity did it this way. They had a number of balloons surrounding the rover and landed and bounced along the surface. Then the balloons were deflated in a particular order so the rover ended up the right way up. But for these there was some atmosphere to slow the descent with a parachute and balloons. But for landing on the moon you need the thrusters to slow you down for landing so it can't just be balloons on either side. Presumably you could still use something to slow you down that isn't part of the science mission for the lander that gets ejected right before landing an then let the balloons hit the surface and drop down. But now there are multiple mechanisms and things to do the landing which means more money.
On the moon, you would eventually slow down after bouncing because of the energy loss from the not very elastic balloons. But it might take a while and you might bounce into a crater or something.
With the landing probe encased in airbags ejecting from the main body a couple meter above ground. The probe the rolled for a bit, once it stopped it then opened up and started doing science.
Ah, cool. I'll look those up. I just looked at the Athena and I'm tempted to armchair quarterback a tiny bit. I mean, that thing looks extremely top heavy. And it had hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment on it. I also wonder if these companies are patenting their approaches so that other companies can't use working solutions.
Size is important. For thin atmosphere or vacuum planet, airbag approach is optimal for small size lander, but for big size space crane is optimal.
Unfortunately, at the moment I could not suggest what is small and what is big for Moon.
And for about IM, things could be even worse, as they are limited as commercial company (NASA lander could use government money to achieve much higher budget and have much more possibilities to do same thing).
Hopefully someone at Intuitive Machines pores over the data and and design plans and makes significant changes that minimize the opportunity for this to happen the third time around, assuming NASA gives them that opportunity.
If their lander is indeed top-heavy then they have some design issues to overcome. Perhaps adding a set of outriggers that deploy just before touchdown and detach or fold up on command once the lander is deemed to be in a stable orientation. Even landing it as a ball with air cushions that deflate once it comes to rest has to be preferred to simply keeping it the same and hoping for a nice flat spot to land.
> pores over the data and and design plans and makes significant changes
And then publishes it. The fact that they have precise renders still published of their next lander [1] is a bit telling about their engineering approach.
The first one tipped over because a sensor failed. I suppose we don't know why this one did yet but why do these sorts of failures bring out the caveman in everybody suggesting completely giving up on the whole concept and doing something "dumb" that doesn't require control systems? Just because control systems feel scary and you might not personally know how to design them yourself doesn't mean they aren't great when they work. Falcon 9 lands upright pretty reliably but even in the early days of that when it wasn't working, people were saying they should give up and use a giant net or towers or something for it to dumbly fall into. It's like seeing a car crash and saying "Why don't we just have giant balloons around cars to absorb the impact when they crash or guide rails along the roads so they won't go off course if the driver falls asleep?". Yea we could but it's both cheaper and possible to do it smarter.
If you were writing software and it had a bug, you wouldn't throw out the whole thing and replace it with a spreadsheet, you'd fix the bug.
Hopefully they go out of business for having ignored the advice of the entire scientific community simply because they wanted to pull some SpaceX-type-shit on the Moon and ended up costing everyone over a hundred million dollars and probably a setback of years, all because of their CEO's ego.
I was confused because I saw a picture taken from the private moon lander and it was upright. Turns out two private moon landers recently landed and the first one was successful.
Then have the sucessful one walk over and right the others. It could not be that hard? NASA did not have cellphones. They put rovers on the moon. How about putting a couple of spare battery packs and a remote pilot on a rover? Does Uber and Lyft want to start service early?
Readit News
I really wish there was a push in the US government to create and stockpile plutonium-238 and ensure it's readily available, subsidized, and offered for all US probes/rovers/other scientific instruments in space (whether it be for NASA's use who currently has to ration because of how little they have left, or for private use after approval).
Like, why aren't all of space scientific instruments RTG powered like voyager 1 which is still providing useful scientific data 47+ years later. Think about all of the lost scientific insights over the past few decades because either NASA (because of a low stockpile) or private companies like intuitive (from their 2 failures) end up choosing solar panels for their source of power with no other alternative.
Besides the fact that solar panels can fail if they aren't pointed a certain way, they usually offer far less power, and are subject to radiation, micro meteor, or dust damage. All of these are the main reason why these instruments tend to have a far shorter lifespan than voyager 1.
I used to conduct said risk analysis.
1. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-juno-spacecraft-breaks-s...
2. https://www.nasa.gov/missions/europa-clipper/nasas-europa-cl...
There are always tradeoffs, it is almost never "why don't they just" case in spacecraft development.
The UK has around 140t of trans-uranics in its civilian stockpile, of which an estimated 5.6 tonnes of this is Am-241 per https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/627b4440-37c9-4e....
All they had to do was just...
Dead Comment
But if you "just" want to put a probe on the moon, solar panels weigh less than plutonium.
The need for Pu-238 was recognized years ago as the stockpile of consumed by various space probes and I believe Oak Ridge now products Pu-238 fuel pellets. I'm not sure if this production could be ramped up.
But Plutonium use has various risks associated with it. Aside from the obvious security risks, you're strapped it to a rocket that may explode while launch and come back to Earth. This is effectively a dirty bomb if the RTG containment is breached.
Solar panels are really the right choice for anything out to at least mars. Here we had a probe fall over. Would that be recoverable with RTG? Maybe. Maybe not.
You are one internet search away from finding the specific power of RTGs and of solar panels on the moon.
Dead Comment
1. Never invade Russia in winter.
2. Make sure your robotic lunar lander has a low center of gravity.
With the lack of atmosphere is that there is no 'natural' attitude/orientation correction. If you're tilted 5 degrees then you'll stay that way. With an atmosphere drag and aerodynamic forces can be used to ensure a proper orientation.
'Just make sure you come down straight' isn't so easy because when you enter the Moon's 'orbit' (not necessary, speaking colloquially) you're traveling extremely fast. And so to land you need to zero out your horizontal and vertical velocities. You do this by literally turning around the opposite direction and thrusting. And then you need to simultaneously also ensure your vertical velocity stays near zero as you approach the surface.
And then finally you need to come down with your vertical velocity at near zero, your horizontal velocity at zero, and perfectly orientated. This is really friggin hard. If you have even a hair of velocity you're going to bounce, skid, and otherwise do nasty things - which is why so many landers end up on their side, if not upside down. And then there's the Moon's surface itself. Come in on an even slightly unlevel terrain and again you're in for a wild ride.
Even just designing a craft that will not topple once landed is punishing.
I thought it was never get involved in a land war in Asia.
Never get involved in a war is good advice, but sometimes impossible to keep.
Hmm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_HLS
Fuel, engines, and water will be at the bottom.
(For practical examples, look at the F9 first stage, or the Starship prototypes they've already tested.)
Oh, wait, hrm...
Also, make sure your robotic private spacecraft doesn't land on the edge of a crater. Or partly on a big rock. Or where a rock or ledge is high enough between the legs to reach the rest of the craft.
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
> HOUSTON, TX – March 7, 2025 – Intuitive Machines, Inc. (Nasdaq: LUNR, LUNRW) (“Intuitive Machines”) (“Company”), a leading space exploration, infrastructure, and services company, has announced the IM-2 mission lunar lander, Athena, landed 250 meters from its intended landing site in the Mons Mouton region of the lunar south pole, inside of a crater.
It's also somewhat funny that this mission update is written in the style of a press releases, mentioning that stock ticker and an obligatory paragraph about forward-looking statements, whereas others are just a normal update.
https://www.intuitivemachines.com/im-2
Apollo 14 and 12 achieved 30 meters and 163 meters with human piloting, respectively, and that's after the program made precision landing a high-effort mission goal. The automated missions of the 60s-70s were often off target by a kilometre or more, but Surveyor 3 came in within 200 meters as well in '67.
Japan did a mission in 2024 with the express purpose of achieving automated precision landing - SLIM, nicknamed "Moon Sniper" - and hit 55 meters off center of a 100-by-100 elipse despite losing a main engine nozzle during descent (but also landed on its side, bummer). 50-150 meters is what the Chinese missions in the 2010s generally managed to do at times as well. I think Chang'e 5 (2020) holds the present record at within 10 meters.
> “the most southernmost lunar landing and surface operations ever achieved”.
> “This area has been avoided due to its rugged terrain and Intuitive Machines believes the insights and achievements from IM-2 will open this region for further space exploration.”
I wonder if this 250 mile error is why they ended so far south in the first place.
At one point during its transit the spacecraft will have been going about 23,000 miles per hour, suddenly 250 miles doesn't seem like much. Though obviously that's in the middle of the trip and plenty of things happen between the transit between the earth and moon and landing.
Maybe next missions will feature less tower-shaped designs and more crab-shaped designs, at least during the landing phase.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_HLS#/media/File:HLS_S...
https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasa-astronauts-test-spac...
Sure, there's lots of details to consider, e.g. center of gravity, overall weight, maximum possible duration to hover and ability to accurately steer and pick your landing spot. But the inherent difficulty in "how do you not topple over" is definitely there, and it's clear the proposed Starship lander will have to outperform these IM landers significantly.
That said, if you want to scale out payload to the surface I guess you have to (which however eats into your center of gravity advantages from having lots of engines at the bottom, too).
I understand that the recently successful Blue Ghost has sensors to detect suitability of the landing spot, and used it to re-position twice while landing. Starship would probably need something like that, too.
Projectile grappling-hooks to embed into nearby ground then winch the line taught? Just have to make sure all are launched at the same time with force vectors that cancel out. Maybe even launch them before touchdown so it doesn't topple over during landing if one of the feet land on a random rock.
To learn more about the strategy for landing on the moon, listen to this audiobook. Extremely good.
The Man Who Knew the Way to the Moon
Firefly's Blue Ghost landed on the moon last week without tipping over, proving that a modern commercial company can do it.
Kind of embarrassing for IM which is 0 for 2. I'm sure there are all kinds of reasons/excuses for why IM's landers fell over and I'm sure their mission profiles are different from Firefly's, but from a high level perspective I'm sure senior leaders at NASA are reconsidering giving any new contracts to IM.
https://fireflyspace.com/blue-ghost/
Have they published a root-cause analysis?
> from a high level perspective I'm sure senior leaders at NASA are reconsidering giving any new contracts to IM.
Truth is, all contractors rely on NASA data about Moon surface, and this data is not 100% reliable.
But some people trust NASA and others much more cautious and include bigger possible error margins in their models.
I mean, FF could just include much larger design margins, with less payload, so next time FF will optimize design and could also tip over.
But good news, IM next time could make larger margins and will also achieve 100% success.
at NASA, and DOGE, when they catch wind of it
bagholders on reddit trying to understand the 50% drop have not been open to anything rational that explains the 50% drop
so far I've gotten "You are blinded by dumb hate." for pointing out that $LUNR's unintuitive machines getting contracts from Nasa are their only business plan, as if this is a partisan thing
Presumably it's that shape to fit in the fairing of a Falcon 9?
I found dimensions and a picture of IM-1 here:
https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id...
The IM-1 lander was 1.57 meters wide and 4m tall, but based on the picture I think the width doesn't include the legs.
The Blue Ghost lander also launched on an F9; it's 2m high and 3.5m wide, and it landed without falling over. (dimensions from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ghost_Mission_1)
The F9 payload envelope dimensions can be found on page 79 of:
https://www.spacex.com/media/falcon-users-guide-2021-09.pdf
Dimensions shown appear to be <inches> [ <millimeters> ] - the bulk of the space is a cylinder with a radius of "180.020 [ 4572.5011 ]" which I read as just over 4.5 meters in diameter; the cylindrical part is just over 6.6 meters high (and then you get into the conical section at the nose).
The space inside the fairing is bigger than this but there is empty space between it and the payload to ensure they don't come into contact due to vibrations, etc., during launch.
So IM-1 could well have been wider and shorter and still fit on the F9.
Look at the lander. Pray tell, if you want it shorter, where is everything supposed to go?
Here's exactly that:
https://x.com/SERobinsonJr/status/1879361461002371351
Nova-C (Intuitive Machine's platform) is 3x2x2 meters, and fits in a Falcon 9. Blue Ghost is 2x3x3 meters, and fits in the same fairing.
Here's a comparison (note that the Blue Ghost platform is currently the only one to succeed at it's intended mission, though IM1 did technically land safely but sideways):
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/PVz5912B1iQ/maxresdefault.jpg
EDIT: or a horizontal lander, packed on it's side for takeoff.
I'm sure it's more complicated than that, but landing something this tall seems quite complicated too in the first place.
edit: just realized my own stupidity, a ball would be very hard to land..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover#Airbags
See also the section "uprighting", further down the page - they used a tetrahedral shell with a sensor so it knew which side was down and could lever itself upright.
not "eventually toppled" but broke a leg and landed on its side right away.
Definitely the next mission will be the same craft - they have 2 more in the works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSbAUtyO7xo
With the landing probe encased in airbags ejecting from the main body a couple meter above ground. The probe the rolled for a bit, once it stopped it then opened up and started doing science.
Unfortunately, at the moment I could not suggest what is small and what is big for Moon.
And for about IM, things could be even worse, as they are limited as commercial company (NASA lander could use government money to achieve much higher budget and have much more possibilities to do same thing).
Deleted Comment
If their lander is indeed top-heavy then they have some design issues to overcome. Perhaps adding a set of outriggers that deploy just before touchdown and detach or fold up on command once the lander is deemed to be in a stable orientation. Even landing it as a ball with air cushions that deflate once it comes to rest has to be preferred to simply keeping it the same and hoping for a nice flat spot to land.
And then publishes it. The fact that they have precise renders still published of their next lander [1] is a bit telling about their engineering approach.
[1] https://www.intuitivemachines.com/missions
If you were writing software and it had a bug, you wouldn't throw out the whole thing and replace it with a spreadsheet, you'd fix the bug.
Or design it assuming it will tip over on landing.
NASA did it right, but that surface looks like a no-joke bed of razors. Thank you NASA.
When do we launch the lunar tow truck? Cash or charge?