Second American Lunar Lander Touches Down Amid Uncertainty
For the second time in under a week, an American robotic lunar lander has successfully reached the surface of the Moon, marking a significant step forward in NASA’s ambitious plans to return humans to our celestial neighbor in the coming years. The mission, undertaken by Intuitive Machines’ Athena spacecraft, is part of a larger push to establish a permanent lunar presence, but the exact condition of the lander following its touchdown on Thursday remains a subject of inquiry.
The Athena spacecraft’s arrival at the lunar south pole follows an eight-day journey that commenced with its launch on February 26 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. This $62.5 million mission, designated IM-2 by NASA, is the second lunar landing achievement for Intuitive Machines, a Houston-based aerospace company.
Intuitive Machines previously made history in February 2024 with its Odysseus spacecraft, becoming the first commercially-built lunar lander to reach the Moon. That earlier mission also signified the United States’ return to the lunar surface for the first time in over five decades, following the end of NASA’s Apollo program.
The simultaneous operation of two lunar landers, manufactured by separate companies, represents a historic moment in space exploration. On Sunday, Firefly Aerospace, also based in Texas, landed its Blue Ghost spacecraft on the Earth-facing side of the Moon.
NASA considers the work ahead for both landers to be essential for its Artemis program. The agency intends to utilize a series of uncrewed lunar missions to create the groundwork for a permanent lunar settlement, with human return targeted as early as 2027. These lunar endeavors are viewed as a prelude to an even grander goal: sending the first astronauts to Mars, potentially in the 2030s.
The landing of Athena, which occurred around 12:30 p.m. EST, has been accompanied by some uncertainty. While mission controllers have confirmed that the spacecraft did not crash during its descent, they are still working to fully understand its condition. Intuitive Machines and NASA abruptly ended a joint livestream of the event, adding to the air of mystery.
Despite the uncertainty, the lander is generating power and transmitting data back to Earth, including images captured during its descent. Before the livestream concluded, Tim Crain, the chief technology officer at Intuitive Machines, was attempting to obtain a photo of the spacecraft on the lunar surface to assess its landing position.
Further updates are expected to be released via the company’s X account or during a scheduled news conference at 4 p.m. EST. “Athena is on the surface of the moon,” Intuitive Machines’ Josh Marshall announced during the livestream. “We are communicating with the vehicle.”
The Athena spacecraft, categorized as a Nova-C lunar lander, entered lunar orbit on Monday, several days after its launch and separation from the Falcon 9 rocket. Since entering lunar orbit, the solar-powered lander has orbited the Moon approximately every two hours, awaiting sunrise at the permanently-shadowed south pole to power its surface operations.
On Thursday at 5:33 a.m., Athena executed a maneuver to position itself approximately 62 miles above the surface, in preparation for its descent.
The landing site, located near a plateau known as Mons Mouton, is even further south than the landing site of Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander more than a year ago. This crater-filled region is one of nine candidate landing sites identified by NASA for its crewed Artemis III lunar mission.
The mesa-like lunar mountain stands over a terrain shaped by craters, including the Shackleton Crater, a cold, dark region thought to be rich in water ice and other volatile materials.
The name IM-2 signifies that this is the second mission that NASA has contracted Intuitive Machines to undertake, following IM-1 in 2024.
The mission is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which aims to identify more affordable methods of financing privately-managed lunar deliveries, thereby avoiding the need to develop spacecraft in-house.
Expectations were high for Intuitive Machines to achieve a second successful landing, particularly after the Odysseus mission in February, although that lander tipped over upon touchdown. The Athena landing at the lunar south pole is the first step in its mission objectives.
The lunar lander carries a suite of technologies that NASA and other private companies have paid to deliver to and deploy on the Moon. These scientific instruments will be utilized for a range of activities, including searching for subsurface water and testing Nokia’s high-speed, long-range communication systems.
The main experiment aboard Athena is NASA’s PRIME-1 (Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1), which will explore for resources like water in the lunar soil that could be extracted and used by future explorers to produce fuel or breathable oxygen.
In addition, Athena carries several small vehicles to increase the area that can be explored during the mission. These include Intuitive Machines’ Micro Nova Hopper, a propulsive drone that can hop across the lunar surface, and the MAPP rover (Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform), the first-ever commercial rover to land on the Moon, manufactured by Lunar Outpost, a Colorado-based company.
A laser retroreflector array (LRA) on the lander’s top deck will reflect laser light back at incoming spacecraft, enabling more accurate determination of lunar lander locations.
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost spacecraft followed a more circuitous route to the Moon, lifting off on January 15 from the same launch site and atop the same model of rocket.
Blue Ghost’s landing site is near Mons Latreille, a volcanic feature on the Earth-facing side of the Moon. This region is located within Mare Crisium, a 300-mile-wide basin thought to have been formed by early volcanic eruptions and flooded with basaltic lava over 3 billion years ago.
Now on the surface, Blue Ghost has started its $101.5 million mission to deploy 10 NASA science instruments to study the lunar environment. The technology will be used for a complete lunar day, equivalent to about 14 Earth days.
Both the Blue Ghost and Athena landers will also be able to record a total lunar eclipse, visible across the United States and the rest of North America on March 13-14.
