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The Athena Nova-C lander approaches the Moon's surface.
HOUSTON—Intuitive Machines’ Athena Nova-C lander touched down at Mons Mouton in the south pole region of the Moon on March 6, though there is uncertainty over its orientation.
Intuitive and NASA are awaiting imagery from the agency’s long-running Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) to establish whether Athena is upright, leaning, or tipped over, to reassess mission priorities. However, ground control teams are able to communicate with the lander, Steve Altemus, the company’s CEO, and Tim Crain, Intuitive’s co-founder and mission director, told a post-landing NASA news briefing. Those images are anticipated within two days.
Launched Feb. 26 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Athena touched down at 12:31 p.m. EST.
Athena carries three NASA technology and science payloads as well as eight additional commercial and academic contributions in support of the agency’s efforts to establish a sustainable human presence at the Moon and prepare for human expeditions to Mars.
“This is part of perfecting transportation to the Moon,” Crain noted prior to the 1,500-lb. Athena’s 15-min. autonomous descent from its 10-km (6.2 mi.) high descent orbit.
“Fingers crossed, toes crossed,” NASA Acting Administrator Janet Petro said as the descent drama began to unfold.
Intuitive began the lengthy post-landing evaluation to confirm the shutdown and venting of the liquid methane and oxygen descent engine, solar power initiation as well as Athena’s antenna configuration and imagery transmission.
Data from Athena monitored during the descent indicates the lander descended as planned onto Mons Mouton, though outside the intended 50-m-wide landing zone, according to Altemus.
“I don’t have all the data yet to say exactly what the latitude of the vehicle is. We are collecting photos and downlinking those and we will get a picture from the LRO camera from above,” Altemus told the briefing, noting the lander’s solar arrays are generating electricity and there has been a power down on Athena to conserve battery power.
“We have commanding, uplink and downlink from the vehicle to our network on the ground,” Altemus elaborated. “We are communicating. We can command payloads on and off. We will work closely with NASA science and technology groups to identify science objectives that are of the highest priority. Then we will figure out what the mission profile will look like. It will be off-nominal because we are not getting everything that we have asked for.”
Among the NASA payloads prepared for 10 days of sunlit operations is PRIME-1, The Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrains (Trident) and Mass Spectrometer Observing Lunar Operations (MSOLO). They are to probe the lunar south pole subsurface for the presence of volatiles, including water ice, a potential human life support resource, as well as an asset that could be processed into liquid hydrogen and oxygen rocket propellants.
The Prime-1 development participants include NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Honeybee Robotics and Switzerland’s INFICON.
Through its Artemis program, NASA plans to lead an international and commercial partnership in establishing a human base camp in the lunar south pole region.
About the size of a small car with six legs, Athena touched down just four days after the successful soft landing of Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander, which took place March 2 at 3:34 a.m. EST at the Moon’s Mare Crisium, a basaltic plain near a volcanic feature of scientific interest known as Mons Latreilleer. Launched on Jan. 15, Blue Ghost delivered 10 science and technology payloads, five of them connected with NASA’s CLPS program, for 14 days of sunlit operations.
Launched under an initial $62.5 million CLPS task order, Athena is hosting two “tipping point” activities funded by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate.
They include an Intuitive-developed robotic Micro Nova Hopper named Grace. Grace is designed to propulsively leap into a nearby permanently shadowed crater to survey the depression for evidence of possible water ice and transmit data including the thermal environment back to Athena using a 4G/LTE Nokia Lunar Surface Communications System (LSCS). Grace has a range of up to 25 km (15.5 mi.).
Nokia Bell Labs has engineered the LSCS network to provide connectivity between Athena and multiple vehicles, including high-definition video streaming, command and control and telemetry data.
Athena also is equipped with a Laser Retroreflector Array, a passive device provided by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, mounted on the top deck of the lander and positioned to bounce laser light back to cislunar spacecraft to provide them with a surface reference point for navigation.
On the commercial payload front, Athena is carrying the YAOKI, a small, lightweight rover developed by the Dymon Co. Ltd., of Japan, which is to map the lunar surface within a 50-m radius of the lander.
Freedom, a Lonestar Data Holdings technology, is a data center and edge processing facility, with a reach that includes the cislunar domain and the Moon’s surface.
Lunar Outpost has provided a commercial rover designated the Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP) for a demonstration of autonomous navigation capabilities able to avoid surface hazards. Columbia Sportswear provided the Omni-Heat Infinity and Omni-Shade Sun Deflector, which provides insulation for Athena’s helium tank and a solar heat deflector.
The Puli Lunar Water Snooper, a neutron spectrometer provided by Hungary’s Puli Space Technologies Ltd., will seek evidence for water ice, assess the radiation environment and map permanently shadowed terrain, all while mounted on the Micro Nova Hopper.
Intuitive has helped to pioneer NASA’s CLPS program, which was initiated in 2018-19 to incorporate the commercial sector into future deep-space exploration efforts.
The Houston-based company’s initial mission, launched in February 2024, was the first to reach the lunar surface under the CLPS initiative. Flight controllers managed to overcome an issue with a laser altimeter to land at Malapert A, also in the lunar south pole region. But the Odysseus lander tipped over, limiting planned science operations.
The first CLPS mission launched in January 2024 by Astrobotic Technologies experienced a post-launch propellant leak that prevented a Moon landing attempt.
Firefly Aerospace, based in Cedar Park, Texas, an Austin suburb, marked the third CLPS mission. With more to come, NASA plans to invest $2.6 billion in the commercial lunar lander initiative through 2028. Fourteen companies are eligible to compete for CLPS mission task orders.
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