Athena did not crash. But what happened to that?
After the 15-foot-high robotic spacecraft arrived at the surface of the moon, and it arrived at the surface of the moon closer to the moon's Antarctic than the spacecraft, it remained unclear whether the touchdown was smooth enough to perform the intended work, or whether it could limit the mission's scientific achievements.
“We're trying to assess exactly what happened with that last bit,” Tim Crane, chief technology officer for intuitive machines, told a news conference.
The spacecraft is roughly the same as the Odysseus, the lander that the company sent to the moon last year. The Odysseus was the first commercially driven vehicle to succeed on the moon. But that success came with an asterisk when the vehicle collapsed shortly after it reached the ground.
It seems that it may have happened again.
At a post-landing press conference, Steve Artemas, the CEO of the intuitive machine, said he had sent back contradictory data on whether the spacecraft is upright or upside down. However, the sensor known as the inertial measurement unit provided a perhaps persuasive cues that Athena was on its side.
Heading towards the moon, laser equipment measuring Lander's altitude provided loud data that could have contributed to the failed landing.
Until that last descent, Athena played much smoother than the Odysseus Lander a year ago, said Dr. Crane, an intuitive machine. “We were hoping that the landing would be a complete success,” he said.
Artemas said it was too early to determine how many of the planned missions will still be recovered. The Athena payload includes a drill, three small rovers and a rocket-powered hopping drone.
“Once we get that full assessment, we will work closely with the NASA Science and Technology Group to identify our top priority, our scientific goals,” Altemus said. “And understand what the mission profile looks like.”
Spacecraft are not generating the original power, possibly because the solar panels are not pointed in the right direction.
Images from the spacecraft camera help intuitive machines to understand the orientation of the spacecraft. Dr. Crane was convinced that the spacecraft was probably placed outside the planned landing zone, but somewhere in Mons Mouton, a plateau near Antarctic where Athena explores.
Images from NASA's lunar reconnaissance orbiter could pass through the landing site and locate the exact location of Athena.
It was a busy week with spaceflight and the moon. The intuitive machine was the second company to reach the lunar surface this week after Firefly Aerospace, the Texas Space Company, reached the Mare Crisuium region of the moon on Sunday morning.
“Every time humanity places a lander on the moon, it's a good day,” Dr. Crane said.
The main clients of both missions employ private companies to bring NASA-winning science and technology payloads to the moon. The NASA contract for this mission is worth up to $62.5 million, but intuitive machines may not be paid in full.
The shares of the intuitive machine, traded under the name Lunr after its release in 2023, fell over after reporting a spaceship issue. That stock fell 20% on Thursday.
The main payload of Athena is a NASA drill that extracts lunar soil by mass spectrometers of frozen water and other compounds. NASA officials said the drill could work even if the spacecraft was not vertical. Clayton Turner, NASA's Space Technology Mission Director, said: “There are other options that we can use.”
They also have a small dog-sized rover that will test the Nokia mobile phone network on the moon, one with two small rovers built by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and two small rovers built by Japanese companies. The intuitive machinery also planned to test a rocket-powered vehicle called a hopper that allows Rovers to explore places they don't easily reach.
The Landers parade on the moon is expected to continue for the rest of the year.
One of those spaceships is already in space. Ispace of Japan's Resilience Lander was released on the same SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that sent Firefly's Blue Ghost along the way. But it takes a longer, more fuel-efficient path to the moon. It enters orbit around the moon around May 6th, and a month later it attempts to land in Mare Frigoris, or cold waters, in the northern hemisphere of the moon.
In the fall, Pittsburgh's Astrobotic technology is about to reach the moon that flies a large lander known as the Griffin, carrying commercial rovers designed by Venturias Straub in Hawthorn, California.
The most interesting Lander was planned by Blue Origin, a rocket company started by Jeff Bezos. The Lander, known as Blue Moonmark 1, is bigger than the moon, even bigger than the one that took NASA astronauts to the moon during the Apollo Moon Landings over 50 years ago, and becomes the largest spaceship to descend on the moon.
Daniel Kay Reports of contributions.
