A little while ago, Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C Athena lander attempted its Moon landing in the Mons Mouton area. This was an autonomous maneuver that was the key step in the IM-2 mission. In the minutes following the end of the maneuver, signals started arriving at mission control with increasing clarity. This allowed them to start understanding Athena’s situation.
The initial connection with the Athena lander isn’t completely stable, which is slowing operations. On the bright side, the systems that exhausted their purpose are properly shutting down. The final goal is to begin the operations necessary to verify that the onboard systems work properly and bring them into the configuration in which they will perform tasks on the Moon.
Launched on February 27, the Athena lander made a relatively short journey to the Moon. This is the second spaceflight for a Nova-C lander, just over a year after that of Odysseus, whose landing on the Moon during the IM-1 mission was only partially successful.
The landing system of the Nova-C landers includes instruments that can detect potentially dangerous objects on the ground such as rocks and move sideways to reach a safe point on the ground. However, the landing remains a complex maneuver and in the end, only on-site tests can reveal certain problems for the automated system due to the conditions it encounters on the Moon. Intuitive Machines’ team refined the system using data collected on the IM-1 mission.
Athena also carries another smaller lander, the Micro Nova Hopper called Grace, and the small Japanese rover Yaoki. Research into the presence of water on the Moon and lunar geology in general is crucial for NASA, which has a contract with Intuitive Machines within the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.
The work by Intuitive Machines’ team is in some ways just beginning. Getting precise information on the Athena lander’s situation is a priority but the fact that it communicates means it has landed in one piece. As with the missions from a year ago, the situation is still dynamic, so updates could arrive at any time.
Edit. Today – March 7 – new information arrived that was decidedly more negative than the first. Athena landed in a crater and on its side. It seemed that the problems were only in communications, instead, they are similar to those of Odysseus in the IM-1 mission. Intuitive Machines will try to get some instruments up and running, but the IM-2 mission will be short.
The bottom image (Courtesy Intuitive Machines / NASA) shows a simulation of the Athena lander’s descent.
