For the second time in less than a week, a privately built U.S. spacecraft has landed on the moon — but it was not a perfect touchdown.
Intuitive Machines, the Texas-based company that built the lunar lander, said Thursday that it does not yet know whether the vehicle is right side up.
Steve Altemus, the company’s CEO, said at a news briefing that there was conflicting data from the lander, dubbed Athena, about whether it is upright or tilted on its side. Athena’s exact location on the lunar surface is also not yet known.
The roughly dishwasher-sized spacecraft was aiming for a plateau on a giant, flat-topped mountain called Mons Mouton, in the moon’s south polar region.
“I believe we’re in the vicinity of the landing site,” Altemus said.
He added that images from the lander and photos taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is circling the moon, will help mission controllers in the coming days figure out the spacecraft’s orientation.
Despite the uncertain outcome, Altemus said flight controllers were able to send and receive data from the spacecraft.
The Athena lunar lander.Intuitive Machines
It has been a busy week on the moon: A different robotic lander — built by Firefly Aerospace, which is also based in Texas — touched down on the lunar surface Sunday, in a 350-mile-wide basin on the near side of the moon (the side that always faces Earth).
Both the Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace missions are part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which the agency set up to support the development of moon landers by private-sector companies. More than a dozen U.S. companies are taking part in the initiative, which is a key part of NASA’s broader goal of returning astronauts to the moon.
NASA eventually plans to hire at least some of the companies to deliver science experiments, technology and other cargo to the moon.
“I think we can all agree, particularly today, that landing on the moon is extremely hard,” Nicola Fox, the associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said at the briefing Thursday.
The Athena lander launched Feb. 26 and spent the past week journeying to the moon. The mission aimed to spend about a week looking for the possible presence of water ice below the lunar surface.
It was the second moonshot for Intuitive Machines, which made history in February 2024 by becoming the first to land a commercially built spacecraft on the moon. However, that lander, called Odysseus, wound up tipping over on its side after it landed.
The flight was still seen as a success, and it was the first time an American spacecraft had touched down on the moon in more than 50 years — since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
Odysseus also targeted the moon’s south polar region, landing near a crater called Malapert A, close to the lunar south pole.
Scientists think water ice may be relatively abundant at the lunar south pole. Water is considered a critical resource for future crewed missions to the moon, particularly for potential long-term stays.
Athena carried several rovers with it, including a suitcase-sized vehicle built by the company Lunar Outpost, named MAPP (short for Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform). The rover was designed to roam around the landing site and capture 3D images of the terrain.
In addition, a thumb-sized rover known as AstroAnt, developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was expected to wheel around on the roof of the MAPP rover to assess its health and take temperature readings.
Furthermore, mission controllers planned to release a drone, dubbed Grace, to make a series of hops around Athena’s landing site. The robot was expected to cover around 650 feet in four hops and could explore a nearby crater to scan for traces of hydrogen and deposits of ice, according to Intuitive Machines.
The plan for Athena on the lunar surface also called for it to test a 4G communications system developed by Nokia. Company officials have said such a network could be used to relay communications, telemetry or other data between different spacecraft on the moon.
Altemus said mission controllers have been able to power Athena’s onboard experiments on and off but do not yet have a full understanding of the health of all the payloads. The company still hopes to complete at least some of the mission objectives, he said, but they will be “off nominal.”
“When we get that full assessment, we will then work closely with NASA science and technology groups to identify science objectives that are the highest priority,” he said.
Regardless of the outcome of Athena’s mission, moonmania won’t end this week: This summer, a lander and tiny rover developed by a Japanese company called ispace will try to land on the moon, near the center of a vast basin close to the moon’s north pole called Mare Frigoris.
