Intuitive Machines announced on Friday morning that its Athena mission to the surface of the Moon, which landed on its side, has ended.
“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 company said in a statement. “The mission has concluded and teams are continuing to assess the data collected throughout the mission.”
Athena, a commercially developed lander, touched down on the lunar surface on Thursday at 11:28 am local time in Houston (17:28 UTC). The probe landed within 250 meters of its targeted landing site in the Mons Mouton region of the Moon. This is the southernmost location that any probe has landed on the Moon, within a few degrees of the lunar south pole.
Déjà vu for IM-2
This marked the Houston-based company’s second lunar mission. The first one, a little more than a year ago, suffered a problem with its laser rangefinders prior to landing. Although it touched down softly, this first lander reached the Moon going slightly faster than intended—and in a location with a steeper slope. It broke a landing leg and toppled over. However, even in this configuration, the Odysseus mission was able to generate power and complete a significant portion of its scientific objectives over the course of a week of activity on the Moon.
Intuitive Machines has not yet said precisely what happened in Athena‘s final moments before it reached the Moon on Thursday. However, in a news conference on Thursday afternoon, company officials confirmed that they had experienced another problem with the laser rangefinders. This caused the spacecraft to, again, not know precisely where it was relative to the surface of the Moon, or how high.
The Athena mission was funded in significant part by NASA. The space agency has begun to hire commercial companies like Intuitive Machines to deliver scientific experiments to the lunar surface as it gears up for a human exploration program near the South Pole of the Moon.
