Two downed landers lie dormant for a moonlit night they may not survive

The lunar night has arrived again, presenting another test for the two landers that recently arrived on the surface of the moon. Both Japan’s SLIM spacecraft and Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus have gone to sleep for the two-week stretch of darkness, the two teams confirmed late this week. There is no guarantee that they will be able to resume operations afterwards, but they will try to reconnect when the time is right.

Although solar-powered landers aren’t built to survive the cold lunar night, SLIM — which has been on the moon since Jan. 19 — has already beaten the odds before enduring last month. This will be the first lunar night for Odysseus, which landed on February 22.

The missions, while successful in that the spacecraft survived their respective surface descents, stand as further examples of how challenging it is to land on the Moon; both landers fell, leaving them stuck in non-ideal positions. The THIN stood up and Odysseus broke his leg and rolled over on his side.

SLIM was able to capture several images from the surface, and the team shared another look at the Shioli Crater from its vantage point on Thursday before it shut down. Odysseus also sent home several pictures from its wide-angle camera, including one last transmission before the lunar night, showing part of the lander and the surface of the Moon, with a small crescent of Earth in the distance. But the world eagerly awaited EagleCam third-person POV photos taken by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University students hitchhiking with Odysseus. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem likely to happen at this stage.

The camera was not deployed as originally planned before the moment of touchdown, and while intuitive machines said this week that the team was able to turn it on and jettison it after Odysseus reached the surface, communication with the camera has so far been down. “The Embry-Riddle team is working on it and wrestling with it to see if there’s anything they can do,” Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Althemus said Wednesday. The start of the moonlit night won’t help those odds.