A commercially built moon lander built by Houston-based Intuitive Machines landed near the moon’s south pole Thursday, but telemetry indicated it ended up on its side. The lander is “alive,” officials said, but it’s not yet known what mission objectives might still be met.
Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus said “we don’t believe we’re in the correct attitude (orientation) on the surface of the moon yet again. I don’t have all the data yet to say exactly what the attitude of the vehicle is.
“We’re collecting photos now and downlinking those, and we’re going to get a picture from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter camera from above, from orbit, and we’ll confirm that over the coming days as we get that data down.”
The touchdown came one year after Intuitive’s first moon lander, named Odysseus, landed on the moon while still moving sideways. A landing leg broke and the spacecraft tipped over on its side, limiting the mission’s scientific return. Intuitive’s stock fell 20 percent in the wake of the latest landing problem.
Known as Athena, the IM-2 spacecraft, was launched eight days ago by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Sharing the ride to space were three other spacecraft: a moon-bound NASA orbiter, a commercial deep space asteroid prospecting probe and a privately built space tug designed to work in Earth orbit.
NASA lost contact with its Lunar Trailblazer satellite shortly after launch and AstroForge ran into problems commanding its Odin prospector probe. Both payloads are likely lost, officials say, although efforts have continued to establish contact.
Athena carried a set of sophisticated instruments, two small rovers, experimental cellular communications gear and a rocket-powered “hopper” designed to bounce from site to site near the lander. Athena apparently touched down 100 miles or so from the moon’s south pole around 12:30 p.m. EST.
The exact timing and the lander’s exact location were not immediately known as company flight controllers worked to evaluate confusing telemetry from the spacecraft.
But they eventually confirmed the spacecraft’s main engine had shut down, its solar cells were generating power and the lander’s flight computer was in contact with company flight controllers, acknowledging commands as they were received.
Altemus, a former NASA shuttle engineer and senior manager at the Johnson Space Center, said the most reliable information came from the lander’s inertial measurement unit, or IMU, which indicated Athena was resting on its side.
“We think that’s the case,” he said. “I would like to get a picture, though, to know the orientation of exactly where the antennas are pointed, where the engine bell is pointed, where are the solar panels so that we can figure out a power profile.”
“With the payloads, we can talk to them and command them on and off. So if we can figure out the orientation correctly with imagery, we can then develop a power profile (that will) result in a series of priorities in the science and technology list that would allow us to capture some mission objectives.”
But time is short. The solar-powered Athena will only be able to operate for about 10 days before the sun sets and darkness sweeps over the landing site at the end of the lunar day.
“When we get that full assessment, we will then work closely with NASA science and technology groups to identify science objectives that are the highest priority,” Altemus said. “And then we’ll figure out what the mission profile will look (like). It will be off-nominal because we’re not getting everything that we had asked for in terms of power generation, communications, et cetera.”
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 reduce 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, scanning the surface ahead for hazards.
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. But the spacecraft autonomously maneuvered to find a safer landing area after evaluating the surface ahead. The details of the final phases of the descent are not yet known.
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.
The innovative Grace hopper was designed to 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 were expected to look for the chemical traces of water and other compounds, along with taking measurements of soil temperature and composition. Two small rovers were on board to explore the landing site and to test innovative mobility systems.
Altemus said it may still be possible to deploy the hopper and the rovers, but that will depend on the lander’s orientation.
Athena was the second of three lunar landers to reach the moon this year.
A lander built by Austin-based Firefly Aerospace successfully touched down on the moon early Sunday. 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.
In the meantime, 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.
