Updated 4:30 p.m. Eastern with NASA statement.
WASHINGTON — Intuitive Machines says its second lunar landing mission is over after concluding the toppled lander cannot generate sufficient power.
In a statement March 7, the company said its IM-2 mission was over less than 24 hours after the Athena spacecraft landed, but fell on its side, in the Mons Mouton region near the south pole of the moon. In a separate NASA statement later the same day, the agency said lander operations ended at 1:15 a.m. Eastern, less than 13 hours after landing.
“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 stated. “The mission has concluded and teams are continuing to assess the data collected throughout the mission.”
The company did release an image from the lander which showed the lander on its side on the surface. While the side of the lander facing up was illuminated by the sun, the spacecraft was lying in a shadowed region of a small crater.
“Power is interesting at the south pole because it’s impacted not only by the solar illumination and our consumption but by the thermal environment,” said Tim Crain, senior vice president of Intuitive Machines, at a post-landing briefing March 6. The key issue, he said, was how much power heaters would require to keep the spacecraft warm.
At the time, he said the spacecraft was generating power and charging. “Once we find out exactly what orientation we’re in, we’ll be able to figure out what the longevity is and how to plan that power.”
Intuitive Machines says it estimated that the lander touched down 250 meters from its intended landing site at Mons Mouton and was inside a crater. The low sun angles there making landings and spacecraft operations challenging. However, NASA said in its statement that the lander touched down more than 400 meters from the intended site.
At the briefing March 6, a few hours after the spacecraft landed, the company said it believed that the spacecraft had landed at Mons Mouton but outside a planned landing ellipse 50 meters across.
Company executives said at the briefing that “noisy” data from a laser altimeter may have contributed to the faulty landing. At the time, the company was still trying to understand the attitude and orientation of the lander to see what payloads could be operated.
“We know that we can communicate with the payloads. We can talk to them and command them on and off,” said Steve Altemus, chief executive of Intuitive Machines, at the briefing. Once they better understand the state of the lander, he said they will work with the payloads to prioritize their activities “that would allow us to capture some mission objectives.”
“After landing, mission controllers were able to accelerate several program and payload milestones, including NASA’s PRIME-1 suite, before the lander’s batteries depleted,” the company said in its latest statement. PRIME-1 was the main NASA payload on the lander, a drill intended to probe up to a meter into the surface to look for water ice and other volatiles.
NASA stated that controllers were able to demonstrate the full range of motion of the PRIME-1 drill in the space environment, while the PRIME-1 mass spectrometer detected elements likely from the lander’s propulsion system.
The company didn’t disclose what other data other payloads on the lander provided. Among those payloads was a “hopper” developed by Intuitive Machines that would have used thrusters to hop from location to location on the surface. The lander also carried a 4G/LTE payload from Nokia to test the ability to use terrestrial wireless technologies to communicate with both the hopper and a small rover from Lunar Outpost.
“Each success and setback are opportunities to learn and grow, and we will use this lesson to propel our efforts to advance science, exploration and commercial development as we get ready for human exploration of Mars,” Nicky Fox, NASA associate administrator for science, said in the agency statement.
The early end of the IM-2 mission adds to the uneven record of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. In addition to IM-1, which also toppled over on landing last year but still operated for a week, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander suffered a propulsion anomaly hours after its January 2024 launch that prevented a lunar landing. However, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 1 spacecraft successfully landed on the moon March 2 and its continuing to operate.
“While we’re disappointed in the outcome of the IM-2 mission, we remain committed to supporting our commercial vendors as they navigate the very difficult task of landing and operating on the moon,” stated Joel Kearns, NASA deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.
Shares in Intuitive Machines, which fell 20% in trading March 6, fell another 22% at the close of trading March 7.
