The second moon landing by Intuitive Machines appears to have suffered the same fate as its first try last year, with data indicating the Athena lander ended on its side on the lunar surface after problems with its laser rangefinders, the U.S. company said on Thursday.
The 4.7-metre-tall and six-legged Athena lander, carrying 11 payloads and scientific instruments, flew a winding path to the moon some 383,000 km from the earth after launching atop a SpaceX rocket on February 26 from Florida. It touched down at a site roughly 160 km from the lunar south pole.
“We don’t believe we’re in the correct attitude on the surface of the moon, yet again,” Steve Altemus, CEO of the Houston-based startup, told a news conference.
Wonky landing
Intuitive Machines is one of many companies primed by NASA to return the United States to the moon, with greater private sector involvement seen as a lower cost but higher risk means of spaceflight. The company’s shares were down 36% at around $7 in extended trading after having closed the regular Nasdaq session down 20% at $11.26.
Altemus said the lander sent some data back to the earth that indicated it was not upright. Specifically, he said, data from an instrument called the inertial measurement unit, or IMU, “says we’re oriented somewhat on our side.” He added: “The IMU measurement was the piece of data that gave us the most clarity … so we think that’s the case.”
A sweep by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in the coming days is expected to confirm its position and orientation.
Power generation issues due to the position of the lander would mean the mission would be “off-nominal,” Altemus said, adding that there were “challenges” with the laser rangefinders, which are used to measure precise distances.
The lander carries a drill, a hopping drone, and rovers for NASA and other customers. “Obviously, without knowing the exact orientation of the lander, it’s hard to say exactly what science we will and will not be able to do” with these instruments, NASA’s top science officer Nicky Fox said.
Athena’s landing was targeted for a touchdown timed for 1732 GMT. But by that time, its engine was still running, telemetry showed, as it appeared to hover over the moon’s surface. Minutes later, after directing the lander’s engine to shut down, the company confirmed that Athena “is on the surface of the moon,” though its exact orientation was not yet clear.
The company may hold off on its third lunar landing mission, scheduled for next year, in order to wait for deployment of a company communications satellite, Altemus said.
Positive spin
Company executives tried to put a positive spin on the developments.
Chief Technology Officer Tim Crain described what he called a successful flight to the moon and smarter crater-recognition algorithms that worked “almost an order of magnitude better than we anticipated.”
“The future is bright for Intuitive Machines to land lots and lots of cargo on the moon,” Crain said.
NASA officials said before the landing that they knew going in that some of the low-cost missions would fail. But with more private missions to the moon, that increased the number of experiments getting there.
The first moon landing attempt by Intuitive Machines almost exactly a year ago, using its Odysseus lander, marked the most successful touchdown attempt at the time by a private company. But its hard touchdown, due to a faulty laser altimeter used to judge its distance from the ground, broke a lander leg and caused the craft to topple over, dooming many of its onboard experiments.
NASA spent tens of millions of dollars on the ice drill and two other instruments riding on Athena, and paid an additional $62 million for the lift. Most of the experiments were from private companies, including the two rovers. The rocket-powered drone came from Intuitive Machines. It’s meant to hop into a permanently shadowed crater near the landing site in search of frozen water.
To lower costs even more, Intuitive Machines shared its SpaceX rocket launch with three spacecraft that went their separate ways. Two of them — NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer and AstroForge’s asteroid-chasing Odin — are in jeopardy.
NASA said this week that Lunar Trailblazer is spinning without radio contact and won’t reach its intended orbit around the moon for science observations. Odin is also silent, with its planned asteroid flyby unlikely.
Back to the moon
As for Athena, Intuitive Machines made dozens of repairs and upgrades following the company’s sideways touchdown by its first lander. It still managed to operate briefly, ending America’s moon-landing drought of more than 50 years.
Until then, the U.S. had not landed on the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. No one else has sent astronauts to the moon, the overriding goal of NASA’s Artemis program. And only four other countries have successfully landed robotic spacecraft on the moon: Russia, China, India and Japan.
The United States and China are both aiming to put their astronauts on the moon this decade, each courting allies and giving their private sectors a key role in spacecraft development.
India’s first uncrewed moon landing, Chandrayaan-3 in 2023, touched down near the lunar south pole. The region is eyed by major space powers for its potential for resource extraction once astronauts return to the surface. Subsurface water ice could in theory be converted into rocket fuel.
Austin-based Firefly Aerospace this month celebrated a clean touchdown of its Blue Ghost lander, marking the most successful soft landing by a private company to date.
Intuitive Machines, Firefly, Astrobotic Technology, and a handful of other companies are building lunar spacecraft under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, an effort to seed development of low-budget spacecraft that can scour the moon’s surface before the U.S. sends astronauts there around 2027.
Published – March 07, 2025 07:56 am IST