The Intuitive Machines Athena lunar lander is in trouble after the IM-2 mission botched its landing on Thursday, leaving the company rushing to conserve power and determine the device’s exact condition and orientation.
In a joint press conference with NASA Thursday evening, Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus said the company is working to retrieve imagery and other information to ascertain what can be done with the lander, which is still sending and receiving communications with Earth.
The lander contains equipment from NASA and other private companies designed to identify locations where water and other potentially crucial resources may be present, which will support the development of a long-term lunar presence.
Moondown
Initially, the IM-2 mission appeared to be proceeding successfully. The lander smoothly made its way from Intuitive Machines headquarters in Texas to catch a ride on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in Florida, after which it achieved lunar orbit and began its descent to the moon’s surface.
During the final approach, the lander’s laser navigation system malfunctioned, leaving the Mission Control team in the dark about the lander’s fate for a brief time. Currently, the team believes the lander may be on its side.
Intuitive Machines believes the lander did touchdown near its target. Still, it will take days for NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter to send back imagery confirming Athena’s exact location and orientation. Despite a rocky landing, Intuitive Machine orbital control showed significant improvement since their last troubled landing.
What IM-2 Can Still Accomplish
It is still unclear how much of the mission NASA and Intuitive Machines can salvage. The lander is communicating, but ground crews are currently receiving weak signals.
About one week of sunlight is left to power the lander’s solar cells before the fourteen-day lunar night falls. The lander’s scheduled week timeline to begin its science mission is now in doubt. NASA representatives were quick to remain positive, noting the high-risk, high-reward nature of the endeavor.
“I think we can all agree, particularly today, that landing on the moon is extremely hard,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator of the Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters. “We look forward to actually being able to work with Intuitive Machines to return as much science data and technology data as we can.”
Private Lunar Exploration
Space exploration has become increasingly privatized in the last decade, as NASA relies more on contractors to facilitate its research missions. NASA launched the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLIPS) initiative in 2018 to handle outsourcing of lunar projects, with authorization for $2.8 billion in contracts through 2028.
While there have been many successes, significant failures are also in the mix. Last year, Intuitive Machines also had a lunar lander fall on its side. Yet Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander successfully touched down on Sunday.
“Our goal is to set companies up to establish a lunar economy on the surface. That means that even if it doesn’t land perfectly, we always learn lessons that we can use in the future,” Fox commented. “At NASA we’re not just about lessons learned, we’re about lessons applied.”
surveillance
“We will be able to work and live on the lunar surface with humans. We will be able to land humans on Mars. That work has to start with days like today,” added Clayton Turner, associate administrator of the Space Technology Mission Directorate
Original IM-2 Expectations
IM-2 launched four major components, planned to identify lunar resources and demonstrate technological capabilities for long-term infrastructure on the moon.
Among these was another Intuitive Machines project, the Micro Nova Hopper drone, designed to hop into shadowy, obscured craters and send back surface scans. The Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1) consists of a drill and mass spectrometer to collect subsurface samples and determine their gas composition.
Nokia’s Lunar Service Communications System, a 4G/LTE cell service solution for future lunar surface communications, and the Laser Retroreflector Array, designed as a passive optical instrument capable of providing a known reference point on the moon for decades to come, round out the IM-2 mission.
As Intuitive Machines and NASA continue working against time to salvage as much data as possible, the IM-2 mission showcases the challenges—and the promise—of how private space exploration is paving the way for a sustainable human presence on the Moon.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted atryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter@mdntwvlf.