Technologies

Odysseus Lunar Lander Sent a Farewell Photo of Earth: Now What?

All about the first US moon mission in more than 50 years. No astronauts, but this effort will help them return.

Goodbye, Odie. On Thursday, Houston-based space-exploration company Intuitive Machines bade farewell to Odysseus, the lunar lander that took the US to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years. The lander had been there for a week and will remain on the moon’s surface, inoperable but remembered as a historic achievement in the annals of lunar exploration.

«Before its power was depleted, Odysseus completed a fitting farewell transmission,» the company wrote in a tweet shared on Thursday. «Received today, this image from February 22nd showcases the crescent Earth in the backdrop, a subtle reminder of humanity’s presence in the universe. Goodnight, Odie. We hope to hear from you.»

Fisheye image showing, at the bottom, part of the lander; in the middle, the lunar surface with its distinctive craters; and up top, a bright white circle against the darkness of space, with a small bright crescent to its left.

Intuitive Machines successfully landed Odysseus on the moon’s surface Feb. 22, after a seven-day space trek by the craft. It’s the first time an American vehicle has been on the surface of the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. But unlike the Apollo missions, which were entirely operated by NASA, this time the space agency hired the private company to send a lander to the moon.

The United States is the only country to ever put humans on the moon, but its focus shifted away from the lunar surface in the 1970s. In recent years, though, NASA has been planning a return, through its Artemis mission, which right now is scheduled to put boots back on the moon no earlier than September 2026 (several years after the original target date). Meanwhile, the space agency has been working with private companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Horizon on a variety of missions, including through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative. The Odysseus mission was under CLPS auspices.

Here’s what to know.

Odysseus moon mission

The Odysseus mission was endorsed by NASA to collect scientific data from the moon’s surface. The lander, known internally as the Nova-C lander — and fondly to Intuitive employees as «Odie» — is about the size of a phone booth. It landed in the South Pole region of the moon called Malapert A at 6:24 p.m. ET on Feb. 22.

Odie was equipped with a host of instruments to investigate the lunar surface and radio waves and send photos back to the US, NASA said. The lander also featured a retroflector array that helped NASA identify its location and keep track of where to send other autonomous vehicles during future missions.

The launch and landing part of the mission lasted seven days, but it was fraught with drama after the Intuitive Machines team discovered that the lander’s range-finding system was inoperable and that the team needed to recode Odysseus to use a different range-finding system to pull off a safe landing. What’s worse, the team found that Odysseus was descending at a rate much faster than expected, increasing the likelihood of a crash. Luckily, that didn’t happen.

What to know about Intuitive Machines

Intuitive Machines is the first benefactor of the NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which the agency started in 2018. NASA researched whether to build and send a lunar lander of its own to the moon. But the space agency determined it would be cheaper, with potentially greater chances of success, to instead pay commercial companies to handle the task.

NASA paid Intuitive Machines $118 million to send Odysseus to the moon. The agency hoped to learn more about the lunar surface and where to eventually send humans back to the moon.

About the Odysseus technology

Odysseus carried several instruments for learning more about the moon and space.

En route to the moon, NASA instruments aboard the craft measured its consumption of cryogenic fuel, and while Odysseus was touching down, another instrument tested the dust the lander kicked up.

Once Odysseus was on the moon, additional technologies were used to evaluate the lunar surface. One, called the Lunar Node 1 Demonstrator, focused on autonomous navigation to show how future landers could traverse the surface. A Laser Retroflector Array conducted range-finding and distance measurements. And a radio wave instrument analyzed the moon’s surface radio waves to determine how’d they’d affect the work of humans conducting science there. Also, four cameras captured images of the lander’s environment.

Tipsy Odysseus

Intuitive Machines confirmed that Odysseus landed off-kilter after it apparently got one of its feet caught on something. The company now believes the lander is either tilted on a rock or lying on its side on the slope of a hill.

Despite the less-than-ideal positioning, Intuitive Machines was able to communicate with Odysseus and its sensors remained operational.

Short life span

Though Odysseus spent just a week on the lunar surface, that’s all it gets. The lander was slated to be operational for only nine to 10 days. After that, Intuitive Machines knew the sun would set on the landing site, and Odysseus’ radios and batteries can’t survive the extremely cold lunar nights.

What’s next

The Odysseus lander mission is just the first in a string of NASA missions that aim at eventually getting astronauts back to the moon. Like Odysseus, future landers will explore the lunar surface, scout ideal locations for landing astronauts, and perform scientific research.

For its part, Intuitive Machines isn’t done on the moon. The Odysseus mission may be over, but the company is already working on two other moon lander missions, slated to launch later this year.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Saturday, April 18

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for April 18

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? It’s the super-long one as always on Saturdays, and a few of the clues are tricky. But if you play all the other New York Times games, 13-Across will be easy. Read on for all the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: What people pay Extra for?
Answer: GUM

4A clue: Pre-meal prayer
Answer: GRACE

6A clue: Physicist Bohr
Answer: NIELS

7A clue: Line up a shot
Answer: AIM

8A clue: Photo ___ (P.R. events)
Answer: OPS

10A clue: «Zootopia,» but not «Zoolander»
Answer: PGMOVIE

12A clue: TV show with the initials «TV»
Answer: THEVIEW

13A clue: New York Times game with weaving, interconnected answers
Answer: STRANDS

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: More bleak
Answer: GRIMMER

2D clue: Dubai’s country, for short
Answer: UAE

3D clue: Nickname of Seth and Evan’s friend in «Superbad»
Answer: MCLOVIN

4D clue: «See you in the mornin’!»
Answer: GNIGHT

5D clue: Fancy term for «noticed»
Answer: ESPIED

7D clue: Many N.Y.C. addresses: Abbr.
Answer: APTS

9D clue: Uses a needle and thread
Answer: SEWS

11D clue: Egg cells
Answer: OVA

Technologies

AI Trusted Less Than Social Media and Airlines, With Grok Placing Last, Survey Says

More Americans are concerned about the loss of personal interaction from AI than they are about potential job loss.

Google Gemini is the most trusted AI platform among its competition, but many people still have concerns about the technology, according to an American Customer Satisfaction Index poll released Thursday.

In ACSI’s results, AI scored an overall customer satisfaction score of 73 on a scale of 0 to 100, which the authors noted was slightly below social media (74), airlines and mortgage lenders, but in line with energy utilities.

Of the five platforms mentioned in the survey, Google Gemini led with 76, followed by Microsoft Copilot (74), Claude and ChatGPT (both 73), and Grok and Perplexity (both 71). Meanwhile, TikTok (77) and YouTube (78) both scored better than the AI platforms.

Gemini is one of the most prolific AI services, with access via smart speakers, TVs, phones and computers, while most ChatGPT users access the AI tool via the ChatGPT website or mobile app, and Grok via social media platform X.

The ACSI poll found that 43% of respondents said reduced human-to-human interaction is their main concern, followed by job loss for future generations (37%) and their own job risk (31%), based on interviews with 2,711 US adults.

Baby Boomers were the most skeptical generation in the poll, with 35% saying they are very concerned about AI’s effects, compared to just 6% who view it extremely favorably.

Disconnect between AI adoption and perception

While platforms such as ChatGPT have up to 1 billion weekly users, there is still a disconnect between AI’s adoption and public perception of it, which is driven by concerns over privacy, the spread of misinformation and the loss of jobs.

«Consumers spent the last decade learning to distrust how social media platforms handle their data, and AI’s privacy scores suggest they’re carrying that skepticism forward,» said Forrest Morgeson, associate professor of marketing at Michigan State University and director of research emeritus at the ACSI.

21% reported an «extremely favorable» outlook toward AI, while an equal 21% said they are «very concerned about the consequences.»

These results were in line with another poll published by YouGov this week, which found that only 29% think the positive effects of AI outweigh the negative ones, while 36% think its net effects are negative.

It’s worth noting that more than half of the people interviewed (56%) had no recent experience with AI, but of the 44% who did, half of them use AI at least once a day, and the usage went up with people who earned over $100,000 a year.

Last month, an NBC poll suggested that AI was one of the least-liked things in America, but it was still more popular than the Democratic Party.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for April 18, #1042

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for April 18, No. 1,042.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle features a fun purple category that’ll require you to spot certain beverage names. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Wow!

Green group hint: Plug it in.

Blue group hint: Cinderella team.

Purple group hint: Drink up.