Lunar Lander Trips and Dies Inside South Pole Crater

Yahoo

08-03-2025

Houston-based space company Intuitive Machines' Athena lunar lander isn't doing so hot.
The lander made its attempt at a landing near the Moon's Mons Mouton, a flat-topped mountain roughly 100 miles from the south pole, around noon on Thursday.
But things didn't quite go as planned. The lander touched down sideways within a crater near the Moon's south pole, causing it to tip over. The company's predecessor, Odyssey, suffered a strikingly similar fate last year.
"We don't believe we're in the correct attitude on the surface of the Moon yet again," Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus announced during a Thursday press conference.
An image released by the company today shows the toppled spacecraft with a half-lit Earth glinting in the background.
It's a bittersweet resting place for what could've been the second successful landing on the Moon in less than three days.
https://twitter.com/Int_Machines/status/1898018154380427501
And as far as Intuitive Machines is concerned, it's officially game over. As the Associated Press reports, the company didn't waste any time, declaring Athena's death less than 24 hours after it touched down.
According to telemetry beamed back by the spacecraft, the lander missed its intended landing spot roughly 100 miles from the Moon's south pole by more than 800 feet. That's in part due to it autonomously trying to avoid hazards on the cratered surface.
Fortunately, the team was able to activate several scientific experiments before shutting down Athena's systems for good, per the AP.
But thanks to its extremely unfortunate orientation, it's unlikely that it'll be able to get enough solar energy to power its instruments, which include a drill, a drone, and three rovers.
"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 team declared in an update.
While Athena has already been written off, Texas-based startup Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander fared much better. It successfully touched down on the lunar surface on Sunday, and sent back imagery showing its surroundings, the Mare Crisium, a massive basin on the Moon's near side.
"With the hardest part behind us, Firefly looks forward to completing more than 14 days of surface operations, again raising the bar for commercial cislunar capabilities," said Firefly CTO Shea Ferring in a statement.
Meanwhile, Intuitive Machines is dealing with some serious fallout following its second failed landing in just two years.
As the New York Times reports, the company's shares fell 20 percent on Thursday. The stock price is down over 50 percent over the last month.
Nonetheless, Altemus sees the situation as a glass half full.
"Any time that you ship a spacecraft to Florida for flight and end up a week later operating on the Moon, I declare that a success," he said during a post-landing news conference.
It's an unfortunate development for NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which contracts private companies to develop more affordable ways to deliver scientific payloads to the Moon's surface.
As the NYT points out, there have been four missions under the program so far, and only one appears to have been a success.
Those four missions include both of Intuitive Machines' failed attempts, as well as Firefly's successful touchdown.
The fourth, Astrobotic's Peregrine spacecraft, suffered a failure during launch early last year, causing it to lose its propellant drift helplessly through space. Astrobotic eventually decided to have it burn up in the Earth's atmosphere instead of venturing onward.
More on the lander: There's Some Serious Drama on the Moon