A private spacecraft has been lost 300,000km away from Earth after it was announced that the mission had run into some ‘issues’.
Last month, the private space firm AstroForge launched its new spacecraft into space, which it encountered ‘massive issues’ shortly after takeoff.
The plan was for the spacecraft, named Odin, to perform a flyby past the moon in order to reach Asteroid 2022 OB5 to capture ‘critical imagery’ of the space rock.
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Odin was launched into space on February 26 on board the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. However, things did not quite go to plan.
On the AstroForge website, the team explained: “Odin’s role is to gather critical imagery of the target asteroid, preparing the way for our next mission, Vestri, which will aim to land on the asteroid and begin extraction.”
It was hoped that Odin’s images would help the team to start their mining efforts in extracting platinum group metals from the asteroid.
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And while the spacecraft was able to successfully separate from the Falcon 9 rocket and power up afterwards, things took a turn from there.
The space firm’s statement continued: “As soon as the pass started, we ran into some massive issues. The wrong polarization was on the antenna, and we still have no idea why. We had already done a live on-site test, and the configuration file was correct. Yet, the polarization is wrong.
“This was wrong for about the first four hours of the mission. This error meant that both uplink and downlink for the first four hours of the mission did not work. No commands were getting through, and also, no data was getting down.”
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The team only managed to receive 13 seconds of communication with the spacecraft which did give them some vital information.
AstroForge went on to say: “We did know Odin was alive. This was also a huge clue; the batteries onboard the spacecraft can only support the spacecraft for about 2.5 hours. So if we got a signal about seven hours into the mission, it means that the spacecraft must have received power from the sun and started to charge.”
Looking into the situation, the team determined that the cause of the issue was because Odin had started to tumble and was tumbling slowly through space.
Unfortunately, the team has been unable to solve the problem and the spacecraft is flying further into space.
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They said: “At this point, Odin is still out there, and we are still trying to talk. Our current theory is that Odin is in a very slow rotation, and that we will become power positive again at a regular rate.
“While we can’t guarantee success, one thing is certain: we will keep learning, iterating, and taking shots on goal—because space is unforgiving, and you only get better by doing.”