IM-2 missions in low lunar orbits
An intuitive machine
The intuitive machine Athena Lander has reached the moon, but appears to have fallen. The Lander is still working, but it is not yet clear which part of the mission will still be able to achieve.
The spacecraft was mounted on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Cape Canaveral, Florida on February 27th. It landed on March 6th, but the landing was not completely successful, and the exact location or orientation of the lunar surface is still unknown.
“I don’t think we’re in the right attitude on the surface of the moon,” the CEO of the intuitive machine said. Stephen Altmus At a press conference just after landing. This is similar to the company’s last attempt at landing on the moon, the Odysseus spacecraft. It was the first time a private company had landed a spacecraft on the moon, but it turned over to its side and was unable to send much of the data back.
There are a variety of scientific instruments in Athena, but perhaps the most important of these are the regoliths and ice drills to explore new terrain (Trident), a NASA experiment designed to drill up to a maximum metre to a meter through the lunar soil. The purpose is to take samples from underground, analyze their contents, and search for water ice and other compounds.
“This experiment marks an important milestone as it will mark the first robotic drilling activity to be carried out in the Antarctic region of the lunar.” Jacqueline Quinn At KSC at a press conference on February 25th. If Trident is still working, “This is an important step in understanding and leveraging the moon’s resources to support future exploration,” she said.
As part of the IM-2 mission, Athena carried several rovers to the moon. One of them is called Grace after Grace Hopper, a computer scientist and mathematician, and unlike the rover that came before him, he is designed to fly around the surface, firing small boosters to dive into the air up to 100 meters, travelling about 200 meters. Grace aims to explore the strange, permanently shadowed craters of the moon.
Athena operators were able to send craft commands to turn it on and off and downlink some of their data to Earth. The solar panels also function to charge Lander electronics. That seems good news, but the team is still working to figure out which instruments can achieve some of their scientific goals, Altemus said.
This is part of a broader push to increase lunar exploration in preparation for planned human missions over the next decade. The Blue Ghost Lander at Firefly Aerospace arrived in the moon on March 2nd. Resilience Lander, a Japanese company Ispace, is on the way.
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Source: www.newscientist.com
