Posts Tagged: kicking

Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander tipped over at touchdown, but it’s still kicking

It turns out Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus spacecraft didn’t land upright after all. In a press conference with NASA Friday evening, the company revealed the lander is laying on its side after coming in a little faster than expected, likely catching its foot on the surface at the moment of landing. Fortunately, Odysseus is positioned in such a way that its solar panels are still getting enough light from the sun to keep it charged, and the team has been able to communicate with it. Pictures from the surface should be coming soon.

While the initial assessment was that Odysseus had landed properly, further analysis indicated otherwise. Intuitive Machines CEO and co-founder Steve Altemus said “stale telemetry” was to blame for the earlier reading. 

A model of the spacecraft showing it positioned on its side

All payloads except the one static art installation, though — Jeff Koons’ Moon Phases sculptures — are on the upturned side. The lander and its NASA science payloads have been collecting data from the journey, descent and landing, which the team will use to try and get a better understanding of what happened. But, all things considered, it seems to be doing well.

The team plans to eject the EagleCam, developed by students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, so it can take a picture of the lander and its surroundings perhaps as soon as this weekend. It was supposed to be ejected during descent to capture the moment of landing, but issues on touchdown day prevented it from being released. 

A portion of the Odysseus lander can be seen with the lunar surface in the background from after it reached lunar orbit
Intuitive Machines
The Bel’kovich K crater on the Moon’s northern equatorial highlands as seen by Odysseus from orbit
Intuitive Machines

Once Odysseus was in lunar orbit and hours away from its landing attempt, the team discovered its laser range finders, which are key to its precision navigation, were not working — due entirely to human error. According to Altemus, someone forgot to flip a safety switch that would allow them to turn on, so they couldn’t. That realization was “like a punch in the stomach,” Altemus said, and they thought they could lose the mission. 

The team was thankfully able to make a last-second adjustment cooked up on the fly by Intuitive Machines CTO and co-founder Tim Crain, who suggested they use one of the on-board NASA payloads instead to guide the descent, the Navigation Doppler LIDAR (NDL). In the end, Odysseus made it there alright. Its mission is expected to last a little over a week, until lunar night falls.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/intuitive-machines-odysseus-lander-tipped-over-at-touchdown-but-its-still-kicking-174541034.html?src=rss
Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Trump’s free speech app Truth Social is censoring content and kicking off users

Former President Trump’s social media platform Truth Social, which launched only two days ago, is struggling with technical glitches and onboarding new users in the early stages of its rollout. The site, which billed itself as a sort of free speech alternative to Twitter with more lax content moderation policies, has already booted a few users off of its platform. Other users are struggling to even access the platform, which now has nearly half a million people on its waitlist.

User Matt Ortega was rejected from Truth Social on the basis of his username, @DevineNunesCow, reported Mashable. A parody Twitter account of the same name poked fun at former Rep. Devin Nunes, who is currently the CEO of Truth Social’s parent company.

A few users have pointed out that Truth Social’s moderation policy is significantly more strict than that of Twitter, despite its claim to be a refuge from Big Tech’s censorship. Unlike Twitter, Truth Social users can get suspended or booted from the platform altogether for posting content that moderators consider to be false, defamatory or misleading. While Twitter has had broad bans in the past on Covid-19 and election misinformation, it regularly allows other types of misinformation to fly by. Truth Social users also can get banned for posting content that moderators deem to be “libelous, slanderous, or otherwise objectionable”. Twitter tends to be selective in how it handles disputes between users, unless it involves targeted harassment campaigns.

Still, it’s unlikely Truth Social will be able to enforce such a strict moderation policy should it continue to grow in scale. The platform is relying on a combination of volunteer moderators, user reports and bots to handle content removal.

New and prospective users are also running into technical glitches while attempting to sign-up on the app, which is only available on iOS. The platform faced a 13-hour service outage just hours after its Sunday evening debut due to a flood of new users. It is now rate-limiting the number of new accounts which can be registered on the site. A waitlist to join the app, at the time of publishing, is more than 500,000 people long.

The app currently has a 4.1 star average user rating on Apple’s App Store, though a number of 5-star reviewers noted they hadn’t been able to sign up on the app yet. One reviewer who rated the app five stars wrote that they had yet to receive an email confirmation from Truth Social that hadn’t expired: "Every time I try to create an account, I don’t receive the email to confirm my email address. No, it’s not in junk mail either. One time I received the email many hours later and it was already expired. I keep trying and will continue to keep trying. 5 stars because I think someone is playing games and the review doesn’t matter because I haven’t even been able to set up an account yet. Just trying to resolve an issue.”

Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics

Google already kicking off work on the Tensor 2 processor for the future Pixel 7

Not one to rest on its laurels, Google has reportedly already begun work on a second-generation Tensor chipset for the Pixel 7.
Android | Digital Trends

Everyone lines up to give Apple a kicking

Over the holidays, major U.S. smartphone company Apple revealed they were intentionally slowing down some older iPhone devices to deal with aging batteries. The admission came after testing revealed this might be going and with the lid blown, Apple had to shift into damage control mode. Sensing an opportunity, several of the largest Android smartphone […]

Come comment on this article: Everyone lines up to give Apple a kicking

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