The Athena lander toppled over in the shadow of a crater around 820 feet (200 meters) from its intended landing site. Credit: Intuitive Machines
Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 mission has ended after its lunar lander, Athena, apparently toppled over as it touched down and came to rest on its side yesterday in a shadowed crater, the company announced. In a statement released this morning, the company said its batteries had run out and they did not expect it to reawaken.
Athena’s face plant was Intuitive Machine’s second rough Moon landing after last year’s Odysseus lander broke a leg and settled on the Moon’s surface at an angle. That mission also ended early as its solar panels couldn’t be oriented directly at the Sun, but it operated on the surface for six days. Athena’s surface mission — originally scheduled to run for 10 days — lasted less than 13 hours.
The company said that “mission controllers were able to accelerate several program and payload milestones,” including for its primary payload, PRIME-1, a NASA instrument equipped with a drill to study water ice beneath its surface. NASA said in a statement that Intuitive Machines had returned some data for the agency. Although the lander’s orientation prevented the drill from actually operating on lunar soil, they were able to test its range of movement. The PRIME-1 mass spectrometer also returned some data before the batteries were depleted — albeit probably of gases from the lander’s engine, not of subsurface soil as intended.
The company said that “mission controllers were able to accelerate several program and payload milestones,” including for its primary payload, PRIME-1, a NASA instrument equipped with a drill to study water ice beneath its surface.
Until yesterday, the IM-2 mission had gone according to plan. After launching from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Feb. 26, the lander reached lunar orbit before descending to its destination, the plateau atop Mons Mouton, near the Moon’s south pole. But upon landing, the mission’s team had trouble determining the craft’s orientation and where it landed in the region.
Intuitive Machines later located Athena roughly 820 feet (250 meters) from its target location on Mons Mouton, inside a crater. A transmitted image showed the craft lying on its side, partly in shadow, with two of its legs sticking up into sunlight.
Because of the extreme cold inside the crater, the direction of the Sun, and the orientation of the solar panels, the company does not expect the craft to be able to recharge its batteries.
NASA said in a statement that Intuitive Machines had returned some data for the agency. although the lander’s orientation prevented the drill from fully operating, they were at least able to test its range of movement. The PRIME-1 mass spectrometer also returned some data before the batteries were depleted — albeit not of soil drilled from below the surface as intended.
One of Athena’s other payloads, a small rover named MAPP (short for Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform), was able to power on and transmit data and “was ready to drive,” said its builder, Lunar Outpost — but it could not be deployed.
On the bright side, Intuitive Machines noted that IM-2 “was the southernmost lunar landing and surface operations ever achieved,”
Intuitive Machines is planning to send its IM-3 mission to the Reiner Gamma region of the Moon with four NASA payloads, as well as a rover and relay satellite. It could launch as early as next year.
NASA and Intuitive Machines could not be reached for comment before publication.
Space challenges
Two missions that launched as rideshare payloads on the same SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as IM-2 have also faced severe setbacks.
Mission controllers are attempting to reestablish contact with NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer, a $95-million satellite designed to map the distribution of different forms of water ice across the Moon. Run by Caltech’s Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) in Pasadena, California, the team was initially able to communicate with the craft. But shortly after launch it encountered power issues and the team lost communication with it the next morning.
The mission team thinks the craft is spinning slowly in a low-power state, NASA said in a March 4 statement. Lunar Trailblazer is taking a circuitous, looping route to the Moon designed to save fuel. But the communication issues have prevented the craft from performing maneuvers to keep it on course. The mission team is now charting alternative paths to the Moon that “may be able to place Lunar Trailblazer in lunar orbit and allow it to complete some of its science objectives,” NASA said, but that hinges on reestablishing contact.
“NASA sends up high-risk, high-reward missions like Lunar Trailblazer to do incredible science at a lower cost, and the team truly encapsulates the NASA innovative spirit — if anyone can bring Lunar Trailblazer back, it is them,” said Nicky Fox, NASA’s associate administrator of its science division, in the statement.
Another mission that caught a ride on IM-2’s launch was Odin, a small satellite from startup Astroforge designed to collect data and images from asteroid 2022 OB5 for potential mining. Astroforge says they built the craft in less than 10 months for $3.5 million.
But soon after Odin was deployed, its operators ran into numerous technical problems at their ground stations, the company said. Their operational team attempted to reestablish contact, receiving unexpected help from amateur radio operators. But on March 6, with the craft traveling farther away and its location growing increasingly uncertain, Astroforge deemed it most likely unrecoverable.
Editor’s note: This story was updated to include information from NASA’s statement.
