DENVER — Intuitive Machines' second moon lander was launched on Wednesday (Feb 26) atop a SpaceX rocket, setting off for the latest private US moonshot one year after the company's first attempt ended early with a lopsided landing.
The six-legged lander, named Athena and roughly as tall as a giraffe, will spend about a week heading toward the moon, where on March 6 it will attempt to land on Mons Mouton, a flat-topped mountain some 160km from the lunar south pole.
The lander is loaded with scientific instruments — mostly customer payloads — including a "hopper" rover built by Intuitive Machines that will deploy from the lander after touchdown and hop around the lunar terrain as a mobility test.
"This mission is much more complex than our first mission," Trent Martin, Intuitive Machines' senior vice president of spacecraft, said in an interview.
"The most critical piece," Martin said, is "making sure that we land upright so that we can get on to the science and technology demonstrations that we need to do on the surface of the moon."
After the liftoff, Intuitive Machines' Athena lander became the third spacecraft actively heading for the moon's surface. Firefly's Blue Ghost lander is due for its first landing attempt on Sunday, followed by a lander from Japan's ispace that will make its touchdown attempt in the coming months.
Early last year, the company's first lander, named Odysseus, made it farther than any other private company without smashing on the moon's surface, a feat celebrated by Nasa. But its hard touchdown — descending about six times faster than planned — broke a lander leg and caused it to topple over, dooming many of its onboard experiments.
With Athena, engineers made improvements to the lander's laser altimeter that was partially to blame for the last moonshot's hard landing.
The company seems confident this time around, but with complex spacecraft and the moon's unforgiving environment, success isn't guaranteed.
"We definitely have fixed the laser altimeter this time, and that part will work," Martin said. "But you never know what that other thing is that's going to jump up and bite you."
Other onboard payloads include a rover built by Japan's Dymon Co Ltd and technology from Nokia to test 4G communications between spacecraft on the moon. The first data centre from startup Lonestar Data Holdings is also on the lander.
And a pair of Nasa instruments, also onboard, will drill three feet into the moon's surface to examine its composition for trace amounts of ice or other resources that could potentially be exploited for fuel in future moon missions.
That research could be crucial for future lunar astronaut missions drawn up by Nasa's Artemis programme, the flagship US moon effort that counts Intuitive Machines' landers, and others from companies such as Firefly Aerospace and Astrobotic, as precursor expeditions ahead of more risky crewed missions.
Athena's landing attempt is expected March 6, and its mission on the surface would last ten days. Nasa has other moon missions in work and plans to use SpaceX's Starship to return humans to the lunar surface by around 2027.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, an influential Trump administration ally, as well as President Donald Trump himself have suggested focusing on Mars and less on the moon, stirring anxiety and uncertainty in a burgeoning industry that has placed heavy bets on the moon.
Martin said Intuitive Machines was bracing for any potential changes to the US space programme by Trump and suggested the company could adapt to Mars missions if necessary.
"Obviously you have to play the game that is in front of you," Martin said. "And as a company, we're not overlooking those things."
Source: Reuters
