Welp, I worked on this one. Specifically, I worked on the laser rangefinders which are under so much scrutiny. I no longer work at Intuitive Machines, but I'm certainly interested in finding out what happened to the lasers this time.
Ooo. Not sure if you can tell us anything. If you can’t I totally understand.
But in case you can: Was a radar based altimeter considered?
How do you guys deal with kicked up regolith? (I have seen first hand how hard heavy snow is on lidars, and would imagine that regolith “shower” is similar, but what do I know.)
The lasers are smaller and lighter than most radar systems. They're also pointed out at about 45 degrees from the lander and they're not supposed to be used for the last few dozen meters of descent.
some of the comments here are suggesting the lander chose that spot, as opposed to crashing and skidding across the surface before settling in the spot purely due to inertia, what's the merit to that?
I did not work on the HDA algorithm which is responsible for landing site deviation, but this technology was inherited from NASA's Project Morpheus, which could intelligently detect hazards and divert to safer sites.
