In less than a week, the second privately constructed US spacecraft is poised to land on the moon.
The robot lander, named Athena, was created by an intuitive machine based in Texas. It was launched into space on February 26th and has been traveling to the moon for the past week.
About the size of a dishwasher, the six-legged ship is set to land in the lunar Antarctic area, with plans to spend a week searching for possible water ice beneath the lunar surface.
The landing is scheduled for Thursday at 12:32 pm ET.
If successful, Athena will be the second vehicle to land on the moon in five days, following another robotic lander built by Texas-based Firefly Aerospace, which landed there on Sunday.
Both missions are part of NASA’s Commercial Moon Payload Services program, aimed at assisting private companies in developing Moonlander technology. Over a dozen US companies are involved in this initiative, which is crucial to NASA’s overarching goal of returning astronauts to the moon.
Athena’s landing will mark the second moonshot for the intuitive machine. The company previously made history in February 2024 by landing a commercially built spacecraft on the moon, becoming the first American spacecraft to land there in over 50 years since the 1972 Apollo 17 mission.
An intuitive machine
The Lander, known as Odysseus, experienced a successful landing despite tipping over afterwards.
Both intuitive machine missions are focused on the Antarctic region of the moon. Odysseus landed near a crater called Marapart A, while Athena is targeting a vast flat mountain plateau known as Mons Mouton.
Scientists believe that water ice is relatively abundant in the moon’s Antarctic region, making it a crucial resource for potential crew missions and long-term stays on the moon.
Athena is equipped with several rovers, including the suitcase-sized vehicles developed by Colorado-based Lunar Outpost called Mapp (Mobile Autonomous Research Exploration Platform). These rovers are designed to explore the landing site and capture 3D images of the terrain.
Furthermore, a thumb-sized rover named “Astroant,” created by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will assess the health of the map rover and take regular temperature measurements.
In addition, the mission includes releasing a drone named Grace, which will hop around the Athena landing site, covering approximately 650 feet in four hops to explore nearby craters and scan for hydrogen traces and ice deposits.
While on the moon, Athena will also test a 4G communications system developed by Nokia, which could facilitate communication and data transfer between spacecraft on the moon.
Moon exploration continues beyond this week, with a Lander and small rover from a Japanese company called Ispace set to land near the northern pole’s vast basin known as Male Frigolis.
Source: www.nbcnews.com
