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They were concerned about not landing upright in the live stream:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg2ffigGcYM&t=5678s

"looks like we had excellent pitch and yaw control throughout, but I did see a little bit of a roll excursion. could it be that we landed off-angle in roll in the final phase?"




That would have lined up with the signal issues too. Glad it wasn’t the case.


I was thinking that because it was a roll excursion, assuming that’s along the axis intersecting the plain of the landing legs, it’s not a matter of being upright but rather a matter of being pointed in the wrong direction. Because they’re landed near the south poll of the moon, and because the moon is tidally locked to the earth and always shows us the same side, I imagine they have a very specific angle they need to be at to be looking at the earth just over the moon’s horizon.




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