Private Lunar Lander Mission Failure Near Moon’s South Pole
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A private lunar lander is no longer working after landing sideways in a crater near the moon’s south pole, ending its mission, officials confirmed on Friday.
The news of the botched landing attempt by Texas-based Intuitive Machines surfaced less than 24 hours after the incident.
Launched just a week before, the lander named Athena missed its landing site by over 800 feet, ultimately settling in a frigid crater, leading the company to declare it as non-operational.
Athena did manage to transmit images confirming its location and activate a few experiments before going silent. The lander carried experiments worth tens of millions of dollars, including an ice drill, drone, and rovers, designed to explore the untouched terrain ahead of planned astronaut visits later in the decade.
Given the orientation of Athena’s solar panels and the extreme cold in the crater, it is unlikely that the lander’s batteries can be recharged.
“The mission has concluded, and teams are analyzing the data collected throughout the mission,” the company stated.
The larger, four-wheeled rover onboard the lander never managed to disembark. However, transmitted data suggests that it survived and could have functioned if circumstances had been different, according to Lunar Outpost, the Colorado-based owner.
This marked the second landing attempt by Intuitive Machines, following a similar sideways landing a year prior. Despite encountering various challenges, the company’s first lander successfully reinstated the U.S. presence on the moon after over five decades.
Earlier in the same week, another Texas-based company executed a successful lunar landing under NASA’s commercial lunar delivery initiative, aimed at boosting lunar business activities in preparation for future astronaut missions. Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander touched down in the moon’s far northern latitudes.
Firefly CEO Jason Kim reported that eight out of ten NASA experiments onboard Blue Ghost had already met their objectives. The lander is anticipated to operate for another week until the end of lunar daylight, when solar power becomes unavailable.
The challenging south polar region of the moon poses unique operational difficulties due to harsh sun angles, limited Earth communications, and rugged, uncharted terrain. Athena’s landing represented the closest approach to the south pole by any spacecraft, just 100 miles away.
NASA has earmarked this region for its first crewed landing since the Apollo program of the 1960s and 1970s, scheduled no earlier than 2027. The polar craters are believed to contain substantial amounts of frozen water, crucial for sustaining future astronauts with drinking water and rocket fuel.
Intuitive Machines holds contracts for two additional lunar landing missions with NASA. The company intends to investigate the cause of the recent failure before proceeding with the next endeavor. Following Athena’s 15-foot touchdown, controllers swiftly deactivated some equipment to conserve power while salvaging whatever was possible.
In both Intuitive Machines’ landing attempts, issues arose at the eleventh hour with the primary laser navigation system.
Intuitive Machines’ rocket-propelled drone, Grace, was poised to traverse the lunar surface before descending into a crater to search for frozen water. Two rovers from separate companies, one American and one Japanese, were set to explore the vicinity as well.
NASA’s ice drill was activated before the lander’s power depletion but failed to penetrate the lunar surface as intended, given the lander’s tilted position. However, flight controllers successfully rotated the drill to demonstrate its functionality, and a companion scientific instrument gathered some data, as per NASA. Several other mission objectives were expedited, according to Intuitive Machines.
NASA had invested $62 million in Intuitive Machines to transport its three experiments to the moon.
