Intuitive Machines Inc, an American space exploration company headquartered in Houston, Texas, partnered with NASA and launched a lunar lander, known as Athena, to land on the moon.
Athena is the second of three lunar landers to land on the moon this year. The first, Blue Ghost Lander, created by Firefly Aerospace, was launched on January 15th and it landed on March 2nd. Firefly Aerospace was also partnered with NASA in launching the Blue Ghost Lander.
Athena landed on the moon today, March 6th, and was launched on February 26th, from Florida’s Space Coast. It landed a hundred miles from the moon’s south pole.
Athena was launched by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and it was accompanied by a moon-bound NASA orbiter, a commercial deep space prospecting probe, and a privately-built space tug that is designed to work in Earth’s orbit. NASA’s orbiter is called the Lunar Trailblazer and the probe is known as Odin.
Athena is equipped with sophisticated instruments, two rovers, and experimental cellular communications gear. It also is equipped with a drill and hopper. The hopper is designed to jump from site to site close to the lander and gather information from the craters. This equipment was funded by NASA, paying a total of 118.5 million dollars to Intuitive Machines.
Its mission is to gather data about the moon’s environment, specifically its purpose is to search the nearby area for confirmation that water ice is stored across the moon.
Since it landed, Intuitive Machines knows that Athena is “alive” but they do not know in what conditions it is in.
Athena will only be able to operate for ten days because it is solar powered and the sun will remain in view for the next ten days but then the moon will become dark in the place in which Athena landed.
