Moon lander from Intuitive Machines touches down on lunar surface

Eight days after launch, a second commercially built moon lander, this one built by Houston-based Intuitive Machines, landed near the moon’s south pole Thursday, but company flight controllers could not immediately confirm the spacecraft’s status and orientation.

Known as Athena, the IM-2 spacecraft, loaded with sophisticated instruments, two small rovers, experimental cellular communications gear and a rocket-powered “hopper” that will bounce from site to site near the lander, apparently touched down 100 miles or so from the moon’s south pole around 12:30 p.m. EST.

The exact timing was uncertain as controllers worked to evaluate telemetry from the spacecraft. But it’s engine shut down, its solar arrays began drawing power and the lander’s flight computer was in solid contact with company flight controllers, acknowledging commands as they were received.

Assuming all its systems are, in fact, healthy, the solar-powered Athena will have about 10 days to complete its observations and measurements before the sun sets and darkness sweeps over the landing site at the end of the lunar day.

The lander braked into orbit Monday, five days after launch from the Kennedy Space Center. Thursday morning, while flying over the far side of the moon, Athena’s main engine fired, starting a process to lower the far side of its orbit from about 62 miles to a little more than 6 miles.

During the coast down to lower altitude, the lander presumably used its cameras and lasers in a terrain relative navigation system to constantly monitor altitude and velocity, keeping the spacecraft on course toward the landing site.

As it neared the target, the main engine fired again in a maneuver called powered descent initiation, designed to sharply reducing its initial 4,000-mph velocity. Once the braking maneuver was complete, Athena was programmed to flip upright into a vertical, tail-down orientation for the final phase of the descent.

The lander was expected to descend at a sedate 2.2 mph for the final drop to the surface in lunar highlands known as the Mons Mouton region, about 100 miles from the south pole in a region NASA is targeting for exploration by astronauts in its Artemis program. But no details were immediately available.

NASA is targeting the south polar region for astronaut landings, in large part because data from orbiting satellites indicate ice may be present in permanently shadowed craters that never see the light of the sun and are among the coldest spots in the solar system.

The water molecules presumably were delivered over billions of years by comet impacts and interactions between moon dust and the electrically charged solar wind.

If all goes well, the Grace hopper will jump into one of those dark craters about a quarter of a mile from Athena for in situ measurements, radioing its observations back to the lander using 4G/LTE cellular network equipment provided by Nokia.

Other instruments on the lander will look for the chemical traces of water and other compounds, along with taking measurements of soil temperature and composition. Two small rovers are on board to explore the landing site and to test innovative mobility systems.

And in a coincidence of timing and location, the lander’s cameras will photograph a solar eclipse on March 14 when Earth briefly passes in front of the sun and casts its shadow on the moon.

Intuitive Machines’ first lander, named Odysseus, successfully landed on the moon last year, but it hit the surface harder than expected while moving a bit sideways, causing it to tip over on its side. The spacecraft still functioned, it was unable to carry out all its planned observations.

Intuitive Machines engineers analyzed telemetry and were able to figure out what went wrong. Athena is equipped with improved software and navigation tools to prevent the same problem from occurring the second time around.

Second lunar lander to reach moon this year

Athena’s arrival is the second of three to reach the moon this year.

A lander built by Austin-based Firefly Aerospace successfully touched down on the moon early Sunday, March 2. The commercially-developed Blue Ghost lander is equipped with 10 NASA-sponsored instruments designed to collect data needed for the Artemis program.

NASA agreed to pay Firefly Aerospace $101 million for delivery of the agency-sponsored science instruments and technology demonstrations to the moon’s surface. The instruments cost NASA another $44 million.

Athena’s instruments and technology demonstrations also were funded by NASA. The agency paid the company $62.5 million to deliver a powerful drill and mass spectrometer, known collectively as Prime-1, to the moon’s surface.

NASA’s “tipping point” technology development program paid $15 million for Nokia’s cellular communications integration and another $41 million went to Intuitive Machines to help finance the “Grace” hopper.

Another $89 million paid for a lunar satellite built by Lockheed Martin that was launched on the same Falcon 9 rocket as Athena. But the Lunar Trailblazer satellite dropped out of contact with Earth shortly after launch and has not been heard from since.

Blue Ghost and Athena were both funded in large part by NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. The CLPS initiative is aimed at encouraging private industry to launch agency payloads to the moon to collect needed science and engineering data before Artemis astronauts begin work on the surface later this decade.

As if Blue Ghost and Athena were not enough, a Japanese lander known as Resilience was launched in January atop the same Falcon 9 rocket that boosted the Blue Ghost into space. Built by Tokyo-based ispace, Resilience took a longer, low-energy route to the moon and will not arrive until early June.

contributed to this report.