The Athena lunar lander (IM-2) has been declared dead after it failed to stick the landing on the surface of the Moon. The second commercial lander launched by Texas-based aerospace company Intuitive Machines attempted to reach the lunar surface on March 6th. However, it ended up in a crater near the lunar south pole, where it then fell on its side. The company confirmed that the mission was dead this morning in a statement.
Per that statement, Intuitive Machines declared that while the lander was no longer operational, the mission was not a total write-off:
“[T]he IM-2 mission lunar lander, Athena, landed 250 meters from its intended landing site in the Mons Mouton region of the lunar south pole, inside of a crater. This was the southernmost lunar landing and surface operations ever achieved. Images downlinked from Athena on the lunar surface confirmed that Athena was on her side. After landing, mission controllers were able to accelerate several program and payload milestones, including NASA’s PRIME-1 suite, before the lander’s batteries depleted.”
“With the direction of the sun, the orientation of the solar panels, and extreme cold temperatures in the crater, Intuitive Machines does not expect Athena to recharge. The mission has concluded and teams are continuing to assess the data collected throughout the mission.”
The lander launched on February 27th, 2025, atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A (LC39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The payload includes the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment 1 (PRIME-1), which consists of the TRIDENT Drill and MSolo mass spectrometer, designed to probe up to one meter (3.3 feet) beneath the lunar surface to search for volatiles like water and carbon dioxide (CO2) – which are critical to the Artemis Program and NASA’s proposed crewed missions to the Moon.
According to NASA, mission controllers did manage to activate Trident and rotate the drill to prove it worked while a companion science instrument collected some data. Intuitive Machines also stated that several other mission objectives were accelerated. Athena’s other payloads include Intuitive Machines’ Micro Nova Hopper (aka. Grace), which is designed to explore craters up to 2 km (1.24 mi) from the lander.
It also carried the Nokia Lunar Surface Communications System (LSCS), a 4G/LTE system to test high-speed, long-range communications. These and other payloads were sent as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, which has contracted with multiple U.S. companies to deliver science and technology experiments to the lunar surface. While Grace and two rovers provided by private companies did not make it off the lander and explore the South Pole-Aitken Basin as planned, Intuitive Machines confirmed that they were able to activate these and other science experiments before the lander lost power.
The IM-2 mission joins its predecessor, the Odysseus mission (IM-1), which attempted to land on the lunar surface last year but also fell on its side shortly after touching down. In both cases, the problem was attributed to a last-minute failure with the lander’s prime laser navigation system. However, IM-1 was the first NASA mission to land on the Moon since the Apollo 17 mission over 50 years ago. This time, the lander also survived longer before its batteries lost power. The IM-2 lander also has the distinction of getting closer to the Moon’s south pole than any previous mission, landing just 160 km (100 mi) away.
On March 2nd, Firefly Aerospace successfully reached the northern hemisphere on the Moon’s near side with its Blue Ghost lander. As part of the CLPS initiative, this mission carried 10 NASA experiments and is expected to remain operational for another week until lunar night descends and it can no longer draw power from its solar panels.
Meanwhile, Intuitive Machines is contracted to deliver two NASA payloads to the Moon with their IM-3 and IM-4 landers. These missions are reportedly scheduled to launch no sooner than late October 2025 and 2027, respectively.
source: www.universetoday.com