Intuitive Machines’ second monthly module with Houston’s Athena spacecraft overturned while landing on the surface of the Earth’s satellite.
It is known that On March 6, Athena landed near Mount Mont Mouton at the south pole of the Moon, but the landing was again not ideal, as the module failed to make the planned fully vertical rendezvous.
«We don’t feel like we’re in the right position on the lunar surface», — said the CEO of Intuitive Machines Steve Altemus during a press conference.
In February 2024, the Intuitive Machines Odysseus made the first ever private landing on the Moon. The rendezvous was a bit rushed, which led to the breakage of one of the supports and a partial rollover. This complicated Odysseus’ ability to maintain communication with Earth.
According to Altemus, the mission profile of the lander on the surface will be non-standard, as we will not get everything we asked for in terms of power generation, communications. 4-meter-long device Athena was launched into orbit by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on February 26. The mission, called IM-2, is funded by NASA as part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program to place scientific and technical instruments aboard private spacecraft.
The ultimate goal is to collect a large amount of cost-effective data on the lunar environment before the astronauts land on the Earth’s surface NASA as part of the Artemis program, scheduled for 2027. They are supposed to land at the south pole of the Moon, and then — set up one or more scientific bases in the area.
The South Pole was chosen for this purpose because it is believed to be the place where large amounts of water ice can be stored, especially at the bottom of craters that are in the shade. According to scientists, the ice has been accumulating here for many billions of years.
Mount Mons Mouton is located just 160 kilometers from the South Pole If all goes according to plan, IM-2 will help researchers estimate the volume and availability of ice in the area, which could possibly be used to produce drinking water and split into hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel production.
The key payload on board Athena is the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment drilling rig, or PRIME-1 for short, to extract lunar soil samples from a depth of about 0.9 meters, as well as a mass spectrometer that will look for traces of water ice and other interesting compounds in the soil samples.
«This experiment marks an important milestone, as it will be the first robotic drilling operation conducted near the Moon’s South Pole This is an important step towards understanding and utilizing lunar resources to support future research», said PRIME-1 project manager Jackie Quinn.
In addition, on board Athena is hosting another Grace spacecraft a 35 kg rover that will use its engines to move independently on the lunar surface and explore the area around it. If everything goes according to plan, Grace should reach one of the lunar craters, which is constantly in the shade and cannot be reached by any other wheeled vehicle.
«The idea is that if you have a really deep crater and you want to go down into it, why not do it with something like a drone?» — explains Senior Vice President of Space Systems at Intuitive Machines Trent Martin.
On board Athena also received a small MAPP (Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform) rover from Lunar Outpost, a Colorado-based company. It is equipped with high-resolution optical and thermal cameras and has its own small robot «AstroAnt», attached to the top of the MAPP thanks to its four magnetic wheels.
Athena, Grace and MAPP will keep in touch with each other using Nokia’s Lunar Surface Communication System installed on the lander, which aims to create the first-ever 4G/LTE network on the Moon. Athena also delivered a Lonestar data server to the Moon as part of the technology demonstration.
On board Athena is another all-terrain vehicle — a nearly 500-gram technical demonstration robot named Yaoki, built by the Japanese company Dymon However, everything will depend on the state of the Athena after a problematic landing It’s too early to say what kind of payloads will be brought in after the obvious violation of the planned landing.
Source: Space.com