Intuitive Machines and the New Era of Lunar Exploration: A Comprehensive Overview

A Historic Achievement and a New Challenge: The Story of Odysseus and Athena

In February 2023, Intuitive Machines, a Houston-based company, made history by successfully landing a robot on the moon. The spacecraft, named Odysseus, was the first commercially operated lander to reach the lunar surface and the first American vehicle to achieve a soft landing on the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. Despite its groundbreaking success, the mission faced an unexpected challenge: Odysseus tipped over upon landing, although it managed to communicate with Earth from its sideways position. Now, Intuitive Machines is gearing up for its next mission, the Athena lander, which aims not only to land on the moon but also to remain upright and conduct a series of scientific experiments. The launch is scheduled for February 26, and the mission has sparked significant interest in the space community and beyond.

Launch Details and Viewing Information: When and Where to Watch the Athena Mission

The Athena spacecraft is set to launch on February 26 at 7:16 p.m. Eastern Time from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It will be carried aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, along with three other spacecraft: Lunar Trailblazer, Odin, and CHIMERA GEO 1. The launch will be streamed live on NASA’s YouTube channel, providing the public with a unique opportunity to witness this historic event. Weather conditions are expected to be favorable, with a greater than 95% chance of clear skies, and SpaceX has confirmed that fueling for the mission is complete. In case of any technical or weather-related issues, there are backup opportunities available during a four-day launch window. If the mission is delayed beyond this window, it will have to wait for a month before the next viable launch opportunity.

Mission Objective: Where Athena is Going and What It’s Carrying

If the launch proceeds as planned on February 26, Athena is expected to land on the moon on March 6. The landing site is Mons Mouton, a region approximately 100 miles from the moon’s south pole. This site is particularly significant because it is closer to the south pole than any previous lunar lander has ventured. The primary payload aboard Athena is a drill designed for NASA as part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. This drill will extract lunar soil from up to three feet below the surface, collecting samples in four-inch increments. A mass spectrometer will then analyze the extracted material for compounds such as frozen water, which can easily transition into gases.

In addition to the drill, Athena is carrying three robotic rovers and a small flying “hopper.” The largest rover, known as the Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP), is part of a NASA-funded experiment to test the first cellphone network on the moon. Developed by Nokia, this network will rely on a rover built by Lunar Outpost, which is roughly the size of a small dog. MAPP will also carry a tiny rover called AstroAnt, built by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which will crawl on the rover’s flat surface. Another rover, Yaoki, built by the Japanese company Dymon, will also be deployed. The hopper, a rocket-powered craft developed by Intuitive Machines under another NASA contract, will explore areas of the moon that are difficult to reach, especially permanently shadowed craters. The hopper will also carry one of the Nokia cellphone antennas.

Overcoming Past Challenges: What Went Wrong with Odysseus and How Athena is Different

The success of the Odysseus mission was tempered by an unexpected issue: the spacecraft tipped over upon landing. The root cause of this problem was a combination of technical oversights. The laser altimeter, a critical tool for guiding the spacecraft to the lunar surface, was rendered ineffective because a safety switch was not disabled during launch preparations. Engineers at Intuitive Machines quickly rewrote the landing software to rely on data from an experimental NASA instrument, but they missed updating a key parameter in the computer code. As a result, the landing software failed to account for the spacecraft’s exact altitude, instead relying on estimates based on horizontal speed and camera images. While this allowed the spacecraft to land safely, it was still moving horizontally when it touched down, causing the landing gear to break and the spacecraft to tip over.

Athena, which uses the same Nova-C design as Odysseus, is expected to fare better. Intuitive Machines has conducted extensive tests on the laser altimeter and has updated the landing software to address the issues encountered during the Odysseus mission. The company is confident that these improvements will result in a more controlled and upright landing.

Other Spacecraft on the Falcon 9 Rocket: Luna Trailblazer, Odin, and CHIMERA GEO 1

Athena is not the only spacecraft on board the Falcon 9 rocket; it is joined by three other vehicles, each with its own unique mission. The first, Lunar Trailblazer, is a low-cost NASA mission designed to measure the distribution of water on the moon from orbit. While Athena will reach the moon in just one week, Lunar Trailblazer will take a more leisurely, fuel-efficient route, with a journey duration of just over four months if it launches on February 26. The second spacecraft, Odin, is a microwave-sized vehicle built by AstroForge of California. Odin’s mission is to travel to a near-Earth asteroid and determine whether it contains valuable metals that could be mined in the future. The third spacecraft, CHIMERA GEO 1, is a product of Epic Aerospace of San Francisco and is designed to deploy small satellites into distant orbits.

The Future of Lunar Exploration: Athena and Beyond

Athena is the third commercial lander launched toward the moon this year, and while it may be the second to arrive, it is part of a growing wave of lunar exploration missions. On January 15, a Falcon 9 rocket carrying two other landers—Blue Ghost from Firefly Aerospace of Austin, Texas, and Resilience from Ispace of Japan—was launched. Blue Ghost, like Athena, is part of NASA’s CLPS program and is scheduled to land on March 2, just a few days ahead of Athena. Its landing site is Mare Crisium, a basin on the near side of the moon. Resilience, also known as the Hakuto-R Mission 2 lander, is taking a more indirect route and is expected to arrive at the moon in May. Its landing site is near the center of Mare Frigoris, or the Sea of Cold, in the moon’s northern hemisphere. This will be Ispace’s second attempt at a lunar landing; its first mission, in 2023, ended in a crash.

The success of these commercial lunar missions marks a new era in space exploration, one where private companies are playing an increasingly important role in advancing our understanding of the moon and beyond. As Athena prepares to land near the moon’s south pole, the world waits with bated breath to see if Intuitive Machines can build on the success of Odysseus and pave the way for even more ambitious missions in the future.