Two spacecraft that launched as rideshare payloads on Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 mission are dealing with post-deployment challenges that might put the missions in jeopardy.
The Lunar Trailblazer, a Moon-bound spacecraft managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Odin, a spacecraft from AstroForge aiming for an asteroid flyby, have both encountered communication issues that are being troubleshooted.
Odin, a 120 kg (265 lb) satellite, was the first of the three rideshare payloads that deployed from the Falcon 9’s upper stage. It began its solo journey roughy 47 minutes and 34 seconds after liftoff on Wednesday, Feb. 26.
Ahead of the launch of Odin, AstroForge began a live stream of its mission control center along with available trajectory and signal data from the various ground stations tracking the spacecraft. The company said it wanted to push back against what it views as a space industry that is “full of secret, closed-door decisions, where the public only sees the results.”
Short recap on the status of the mission before we started our complex operations tonight. We have already learned a massive amount from this mission, and tonight, we get the chance to learn a little more. pic.twitter.com/HmQVd9RXuP
— AstroForge (@astroforge) February 28, 2025
During the stream on Thursday evening, AstroForge CEO Matt Gialich gave a six-minute-long update on the status of Odin. He stated that the spacecraft appeared to be power-positive by the fact that mission control has had intermittent communication with it.
He said that uplinks are also apparently working and the spacecraft does appear to be in deep space, stating that flight controllers “noticed in the downlink analysis that we are uplinking at the same time, so signal is getting to the spacecraft when we get our downlinks from the spacecraft.”
However, he also noted that there are lingering questions regarding the attitude, or positioning, of the spacecraft.
“We have kind of two possibilities. Possibility number one is everything is fine and all of our issues are on the ground,” Gialich said. “Possibility number two is that we’re in a slow, uncontrolled tumble.”
He said that theory number one is the most likely at this juncture and pointed to the fact that the team has “dealt with a shit load of ground issues” during the first full day of the mission.
He said the first ground station that was supposed to pick up communications with Odin made a lot of mistakes, which prevented communications with Odin until about an hour after separating from the Falcon 9 rocket.
Additionally, he said prior to launch a power amplifier at one of the ground stations, one of their “major communications points,” broke and prevented them from sending signal from that site, though they could still receive downlinks there. Another ground station had interference from a cell phone antenna that was installed nearby about a week before launch.
In a comment within the stream’s live chat on YouTube on Friday, Gialich said that the team was “currently not in a commanding mode” for the spacecraft and would try sending another command attempt “on the next pass of India at 4:20 p.m. PST (7:20 p.m. EST, 0020 UTC)” on Friday.
What comes next is to try and send a command to the flight computer on Odin to turn on the power amplifier. Barring that, they will try and communicate with the radio onboard. They are also progressing towards what Gialich called a “contingency burn” about 6.5 days into the mission, which will try to align Odin with its target asteroid.
“Because we are so close on ephemeris, there is a non-zero chance that it will actually put us on a course to the asteroid. The challenge here becomes if there is anything in the predicted error margins here, it’s really hard to track the spacecraft,” Gialich said. “The spacecraft is very far from Earth at this point and to try and point one of these high-gain, thin-beam width antennas at the spacecraft and get it right is going to be really difficult.”
This is the second mission for AstroForge and its first attempt to perform a flyby of an asteroid. The target is designated “2022 OB5” and is believed to be a metal-rich M-class asteroid.
Prior to the launch, Gialich spoke with Spaceflight Now and explained the importance of keying into an asteroid, like 2022 OB5, as a future prospect for mining.
“This particular class of asteroid is very important because these metal asteroids, we believe, are going to be very, very high in the concentration of what are called the ‘platinum-group metals.’ And at the end of the day, we’re a mining company that needs to be able to sell material,” Gialich said.
“We want to be able to sell material on Earth, to a market on Earth that has a value today and that market the critical minerals, specifically the platinum-group metals. It’s a massive market and that’s what we care about.”
Lunar Trailblazer uncertainty
Like AstroForge, NASA also has issues communicating with its Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft, which is managed by JPL. Its mission is to map the water on the Moon’s surface during a series of passes.
Following separation from the Falcon 9 upper stage, the spacecraft began powering up and by 8:13 p.m. EST (0113 UTC) NASA said that mission operators at Caltech’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) were able to establish communications, but noted that they “subsequently received engineering data, or telemetry, indicating intermittent power system issues.”
Then, less than 12 hours later, around 7:30 a.m. EST (1230 UTC) on Thursday, communication was lost with the Lunar Trailblazer.
“Several hours later, the spacecraft turned on its transmitter, and the team now is working with NASA ground stations to reestablish telemetry and commanding to better assess the power system issues and develop potential solutions,” NASA said in a blog post on Thursday.
Spaceflight Now reached out to JPL to see what developments were made since the post went up. A spokesperson for JPL said they were still working to troubleshoot the issues and didn’t have any new updates to provide.
The Lunar Trailblazer mission was first selected as a part of NASA’s Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx) program in 2020, which offers opportunities for low-cost science spacecraft to get ride shares to space.
“To maintain the lower overall cost, SIMPLEx missions have a higher risk posture and less-stringent requirements for oversight and management,” a NASA blog post stated. “This higher risk acceptance bolsters NASA’s portfolio of targeted science missions designed to test pioneering technologies.”
Originally, Lunar Trailblazer was scheduled to fly as rideshare during the launch of the Interstellar Map and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) (scheduled to launch later in 2025), but was shifted to launch on the IM-2 mission (originally scheduled to launch in mid-2023, according to NASA).
The roughly 200 kg (440 lb) spacecraft is roughly 3.5-meters-wide (11.5 ft) and was manufactured by Lockheed Martin.
source: spaceflightnow.com