The technical team is having difficulty setting up contact with Odin, the spacecraft built by the US company AstroForge to fly to deep space.
Odin, the asteroid survey of AstroForge’s planet, before launching in February 2025. Image: AstroForge
Odin was the first private spacecraft aimed to fly further than the moon. The small ship launched the space with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 missile on February 26, the same flight with the Athena Moon landing ship of American Company Intuitive Machines.
Odin weighs 120 kg, designed to collect images of the asteroids 2022 OB5 for the next task, Vestri, in order to land on this asteroid. These tasks are in the plan to bring the Earth’s space resources of AstroForge.
Initially, the signals showed everything that seemed favorable to Odin. AstroForge has also released the image of the ship attached to the upper layer of the missile in space. But now, the technical team is still trying to understand the operating status of the ship.
“We do not fully understand the status of the vehicle,” Matthew Gialich, co -founder and CEO of AstroForge, said on social network X on February 28. Odin is said to be in the “solar safety mode”, which means the ship is in a state of safety and enough energy.
“We believe that the ship has enough energy, even though we have not received remote sensing data to confirm that,” Gialich said. He added that the spacecraft is also in an almost accurate position with prediction, allowing monitoring with high accuracy antenna.
AstroForge believes that there are two possibilities for the current problem. The first thing is everything with the spacecraft is fine but there is a problem on the earth, such as the ground receivers that are not correctly adjusted. Secondly, the ship may be in a slow, controlled state, but the group is in charge that this possibility is not high.
The next steps of AstroForge are sending orders to Odin so that the ship will turn on the power amplifier, thereby transmitting high signals to the Earth, providing important data. “We will reach the deep space, and will be on the other side of the Moon for about two more days. Nothing can stop us unless hitting something,” Gialich said.