Latest news with #NASA-sponsored
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Robot Survived Failed Lunar Landing But Was Trapped Inside and Died Afterward
It is with heavy hearts we report that an intrepid little robot that made it all the way to the Moon has met a horrible end. On Thursday, Intuitive Machine's lunar lander Athena touched down in a crater near the Moon's south pole — sideways. That caused it to tip over, and unable to collect solar energy in its awkward position, the NASA-sponsored spacecraft was declared dead less than 24 hours after arriving. The fate was even more tragic for a robot, dubbed the Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP), that hitched a ride inside the lander. The little, barely one-and-a-half foot long rover, built by Colorado-based startup Lunar Outpost, survived the trip in one piece and was even ready to roam the rocky satellite's craggy surface. But in a cruel twist, Athena's sideways landing blocked MAPP's only exit, and trapped inside, it eventually met a slow death. "Intuitive Machines landing on its side prevented MAPP's deployment," Lunar Outpost said in a statement on X. "Our data paints a clear picture that MAPP survived the landing attempt and would have driven on the lunar surface and achieved our mission objectives had it been given the opportunity." Nonetheless, the robot did bravely manage to send some data back to Earth proving that it was still deployable. MAPP also did enough to demonstrate that some of its scientific capabilities work in space, the company said. Had MAPP been able to break free — or if Athena had stuck its landing — it would have been the first US robotic rover deployed on the surface of the Moon — not to mention the first private rover to roam extraterrestrial soil. Its bevy of systems included a device to connect to an experimental 4G network built by Nokia that would have been broadcast from the Athena lander. MAPP was also equipped to collect a sample of lunar regolith — the Moon's loose surface soil — that the company planned to sell to NASA for $1. This gesture would've marked the first commercially collected regolith sample, setting the legal and financial precedent for space resource utilization in the future, Lunar Outpost said in a press release. Those ambitions, at least for the time-being, were resoundingly squashed when the Athena missed its intended landing spot, a flat-topped mountain called Mons Mouton roughly 100 miles from the lunar south pole. With it unceremoniously tipped on its side, what was originally intended to be a ten-day mission for the lander barely lasted one. Still, this won't be the last we'll hear from either company. Intuitive Machines has two more Moon missions scheduled with NASA for 2026 and 2027, while Lunar Outpost says it's planning additional expeditions, including a return to the south pole and a visit to a curious lunar landscape feature called Reiner Gamma. More on lunar happenings: Amazing Video Shows Spacecraft Touching Down on Surface of Moon
Yahoo
02-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Here's a look at moon landing hits and misses
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Landing a spacecraft on the moon has long been a series of hits and misses. Last year, a spacecraft built by Intuitive Machines through a NASA-sponsored program put the U.S. back on the moon for the first time since the end of the Apollo program, but the lander ended up tipping on its side and operated briefly on the surface. Now another U.S. company — Firefly Aerospace — on Sunday added its lunar lander to the win list, becoming the first private entity to pull off a fully successful moon landing. Both U.S. businesses are part of NASA's effort to support commercial deliveries to the moon ahead of astronaut missions later this decade. The moon is littered with wreckage from failed landings over the years. A rundown on the moon's winners and losers: First victories The Soviet Union's Luna 9 successfully touches down on the moon in 1966, after its predecessors crash or miss the moon altogether. The U.S. follows four months later with Surveyor 1. Both countries achieve more robotic landings, as the race heats up to land men. Apollo rules NASA clinches the space race with the Soviets in 1969 with a moon landing by Apollo 11's Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Twelve astronauts explore the surface over six missions, before the program ends with Apollo 17 in 1972. Still the only country to send humans to the moon, the U.S. hopes to return crews to the surface by the end of 2026 or so, a year after a lunar fly-around by astronauts. China emerges China, in 2013, becomes the third country to successfully land on the moon, delivering a rover named Yutu, Chinese for jade rabbit. China follows with the Yutu-2 rover in 2019, this time touching down on the moon's unexplored far side — an impressive first. A sample return mission on the moon's near side in 2020 yields nearly 4 pounds (1.7 kilograms) of lunar rocks and dirt. Another sample return mission from the far side in 2024 delivers rocks and soil from the less explored part of the moon . Seen as NASA's biggest moon rival, China aims to put its astronauts on the moon by 2030. Russia stumbles In 2023, Russia tries for its first moon landing in nearly a half-century, but the Luna 25 spacecraft smashes into the moon. The country's previous lander — 1976's Luna 24 — not only landed, but returned moon rocks to Earth. India triumphs on take 2 After its first lander slams into the moon in 2019, India regroups and launches Chandrayaan-3 (Hindi for moon craft) in 2023. The craft successfully touches down, making India the fourth country to score a lunar landing. The win comes just four days after Russia's crash-landing. Japan lands sideways Japan becomes the fifth country to land successfully on the moon, with its spacecraft touching down in January. The craft lands on the wrong side, compromising its ability to generate solar power, but manages to crank out pictures and science before falling silent when the long lunar night sets in. Private moon landing attempts A privately funded lander from Israel, named Beresheet, Hebrew for 'in the beginning,' crashes into the moon in 2019. A Japanese entrepreneur's company, ispace, launches a lunar lander in 2023, but it, too, wrecks. Intuitive Machines becomes the first private outfit to achieve a safe moon landing. The lander tipped over on its side in 2024, but worked briefly with limited communications. Another U.S. company — Astrobotic Technology — tried to send a lander to the moon the same year, but had to give up because of a fuel leak, eventually returning to Earth and burning up over the Pacific. There's another private rush to the moon this year after Firefly landed Blue Ghost, delivering experiments for NASA. Intuitive Machines and ispace also plan more moon deliveries. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Marcia Dunn, The Associated Press
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Ambitious lunar lander heading to the moon to search for ice
With two commercial lunar landers already on their way, Houston-based Intuitive Machines has high hopes for its second robotic lander — Athena, the centerpiece of a multi-element, NASA-sponsored mission — launching Wednesday to help pave the way for human expeditions and search for ice. Liftoff from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center is targeted for 7:16 p.m. EST. Assuming an on-time launch and no major problems, the Athena lander is expected to descend to touchdown on a flat mesalike structure known as Mons Mouton on March 6. The landing site is just 100 miles from the moon's south pole. Another privately-built moon lander, Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost, was launched by a Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket on Jan. 15 and is on course to land on the moon early Sunday. Touching down near the center of Mare Crisium, it is equipped with 10 NASA-sponsored instruments to collect data needed for planned astronaut landings in the agency's Artemis program. Blue Ghost shared its Falcon 9 with yet another moon lander, this one built by the Japanese company ispace. It is on a longer, low-energy trajectory to the moon and is expected to land in May. What's different about the Athena lander The Athena lander represents a more complex mission with broader science goals. Intuitive Machines managers say they incorporated dozens of upgrades and improvements to insure a safe, upright landing after the company's first lander, Odysseus, tipped over during touchdown last February. "Every time you go, it's ... a roll-the-dice thing," said CEO Steve Altemus. "I think we have higher confidence, but we're also have a much more complicated mission this time. "This time we're flying with a deployable drill. We're flying with a deployable rover, we're flying with a drone, (a) rocket-powered drone that hops, flies off the lander and hops along the surface and down into a permanently shadowed (crater). "All those deployments and surface operations are new, and we're going to learn when we do those," he said. The Athena lander's Trident drill and a mass spectrometer will analyze the ultra-cold soil beneath the spacecraft. The lander also will deploy a small commercially-built rover and a rocket-powered hopper that will jump up to 300 feet high before bounding into a nearby, permanently shadowed crater in search of ice deposits. Ice would be a critical resource for future astronauts, if it can be extracted, because it can be turned into drinking water, air and even rocket fuel, providing in situ resources that otherwise would have to be carried up from Earth. Data collected by orbiting satellites indicate reservoirs of ice may be present in the cold, dark interiors of polar craters that never see the light of the sun. Athena's mission is the first to actually search for the suspected ice from the surface. The hopper, named Grace after software pioneer Grace Hopper, and the Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform rover built by a company called Lunar Outpost, will communicate with the Athena lander via cellular networking equipment provided by Nokia in a first-of-its-kind demonstration. Other spacecrafts tagging along A tiny microrover known as Yaoki, provided by Tokyo-based Dymon Co., will be dropped to the surface from the Athena lander. It will provide close-up images of the lunar soil, or regolith, and beam them back to Earth through Athena. In case all that is not enough, hitching a ride aboard the Falcon 9 are three more independent spacecraft, one provided by NASA and two from private companies. NASA's Lunar Trailblazer will be released on its own trajectory shortly after launch, headed for an orbit around the moon's poles. During its two-year mission, two instruments will study the nature of any ice that might be present in the soil below while measuring surface temperatures on a global scale. The second hitchhiker is a commercially-built probe called Odin, built by AstroForge, that's headed to deep space on an asteroid prospecting mission. It will be the first commercially-built probe to fly beyond the moon, heading for an asteroid flyby to look for potentially valuable mineral deposits. The third satellite, known as Chimera GEO, was provided by Epic Aerospace. It's a compact space tug built to move small satellites to different locations in space. The Grace hopper may end up the star of the show. Five hops are planned with the first carrying it to an altitude of about 65 feet to a landing another 65 feet from Athena. "On the second hop, we expect to go around 50 meters (164 feet) altitude. And on the third hop we'll go about 100 meters (328 feet) altitude," said Trent Martin, a senior vice president at Intuitive Machines. The fourth hop will carry Grace into a permanently shadowed crater some 1,500 from the lander. It's fifth and final hop, either commanded through the Nokia network or triggered by a backup timer, will carry Gracie back up and out of the crater. "The purpose of the demo is to show that we can reach extreme environments with technologies other than rovers," Martin said. "The idea is that if you have a really deep crater and you want to get down into that crater, why not do it with something like a drone?" The costs of the mission NASA paid Intuitive Machines $62 million to deliver the Trident drill and mass spectrometer, known collectively as Prime-1, to the moon. NASA's "tipping point" technology development program paid $15 million to help fund Nokia's cellular communications integration and another $41 million helps finance Intuitive's Grace hopper. Finally, NASA spent another $89 million on the Lunar Trailblazer satellite and mission operations. Total cost to NASA: $207 million. The mission was funded in large part by the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. The CLPS program is aimed at encouraging private industry to launch agency payloads to the moon to collect needed science and engineering data before Artemis astronauts begin work on the surface near the lunar south pole later this decade. "NASA is investing in commercial delivery services to the moon to enable industry growth and to support long-term lunar exploration, helping the United States stay ahead in space innovation," said Nicola Fox, head of NASA's space science mission directorate. Athena is Intuitive Machines' second CLPS-sponsored lunar lander. The company's first lander, Odysseus, touched down on the moon on Feb. 22, 2024. But the spacecraft came down harder than expected and it was moving slightly to one side at the moment of touchdown. It apparently caught a footpad on the surface and tipped over on its side. The spacecraft still had power, however, and it sent back data for several days. This time around, multiple upgrades were put in place to insure a safe landing for Athena. "If you can routinely land on the moon, all the smart people, the scientists, and the engineers that want to fly things to the moon will now be willing to invest money, to build and engineer the systems that will help us live and work on the moon," Altemus said. "These are the initial highways or trails that open up a whole new region of exploration of the moon. Like the United States when it was very young, go west, right? This is like that. Just like that." Sneak peek: The People v. Kouri Richins Old-Fashioned Beef Stew Musk doubles down on email from federal employees, Trump backs him up
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Ambitious lunar lander heading to the moon to search for ice
With two commercial lunar landers already on their way, Houston-based Intuitive Machines has high hopes for its second robotic lander — Athena, the centerpiece of a multi-element, NASA-sponsored mission — launching Wednesday to help pave the way for human expeditions and search for ice. Liftoff from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center is targeted for 7:16 p.m. EST. Assuming an on-time launch and no major problems, the Athena lander is expected to descend to touchdown on a flat mesalike structure known as Mons Mouton on March 6. The landing site is just 100 miles from the moon's south pole. Another privately-built moon lander, Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost, was launched by a Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket on Jan. 15 and is on course to land on the moon early Sunday. Touching down near the center of Mare Crisium, it is equipped with 10 NASA-sponsored instruments to collect data needed for planned astronaut landings in the agency's Artemis program. Blue Ghost shared its Falcon 9 with yet another moon lander, this one built by the Japanese company ispace. It is on a longer, low-energy trajectory to the moon and is expected to land in May. What's different about the Athena lander The Athena lander represents a more complex mission with broader science goals. Intuitive Machines managers say they incorporated dozens of upgrades and improvements to insure a safe, upright landing after the company's first lander, Odysseus, tipped over during touchdown last February. "Every time you go, it's ... a roll-the-dice thing," said CEO Steve Altemus. "I think we have higher confidence, but we're also have a much more complicated mission this time. "This time we're flying with a deployable drill. We're flying with a deployable rover, we're flying with a drone, (a) rocket-powered drone that hops, flies off the lander and hops along the surface and down into a permanently shadowed (crater). "All those deployments and surface operations are new, and we're going to learn when we do those," he said. The Athena lander's Trident drill and a mass spectrometer will analyze the ultra-cold soil beneath the spacecraft. The lander also will deploy a small commercially-built rover and a rocket-powered hopper that will jump up to 300 feet high before bounding into a nearby, permanently shadowed crater in search of ice deposits. Ice would be a critical resource for future astronauts, if it can be extracted, because it can be turned into drinking water, air and even rocket fuel, providing in situ resources that otherwise would have to be carried up from Earth. Data collected by orbiting satellites indicate reservoirs of ice may be present in the cold, dark interiors of polar craters that never see the light of the sun. Athena's mission is the first to actually search for the suspected ice from the surface. The hopper, named Grace after software pioneer Grace Hopper, and the Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform rover built by a company called Lunar Outpost, will communicate with the Athena lander via cellular networking equipment provided by Nokia in a first-of-its-kind demonstration. Other spacecrafts tagging along A tiny microrover known as Yaoki, provided by Tokyo-based Dymon Co., will be dropped to the surface from the Athena lander. It will provide close-up images of the lunar soil, or regolith, and beam them back to Earth through Athena. In case all that is not enough, hitching a ride aboard the Falcon 9 are three more independent spacecraft, one provided by NASA and two from private companies. NASA's Lunar Trailblazer will be released on its own trajectory shortly after launch, headed for an orbit around the moon's poles. During its two-year mission, two instruments will study the nature of any ice that might be present in the soil below while measuring surface temperatures on a global scale. The second hitchhiker is a commercially-built probe called Odin, built by AstroForge, that's headed to deep space on an asteroid prospecting mission. It will be the first commercially-built probe to fly beyond the moon, heading for an asteroid flyby to look for potentially valuable mineral deposits. The third satellite, known as Chimera GEO, was provided by Epic Aerospace. It's a compact space tug built to move small satellites to different locations in space. The Grace hopper may end up the star of the show. Five hops are planned with the first carrying it to an altitude of about 65 feet to a landing another 65 feet from Athena. "On the second hop, we expect to go around 50 meters (164 feet) altitude. And on the third hop we'll go about 100 meters (328 feet) altitude," said Trent Martin, a senior vice president at Intuitive Machines. The fourth hop will carry Grace into a permanently shadowed crater some 1,500 from the lander. It's fifth and final hop, either commanded through the Nokia network or triggered by a backup timer, will carry Gracie back up and out of the crater. "The purpose of the demo is to show that we can reach extreme environments with technologies other than rovers," Martin said. "The idea is that if you have a really deep crater and you want to get down into that crater, why not do it with something like a drone?" The costs of the mission NASA paid Intuitive Machines $62 million to deliver the Trident drill and mass spectrometer, known collectively as Prime-1, to the moon. NASA's "tipping point" technology development program paid $15 million to help fund Nokia's cellular communications integration and another $41 million helps finance Intuitive's Grace hopper. Finally, NASA spent another $89 million on the Lunar Trailblazer satellite and mission operations. Total cost to NASA: $207 million. The mission was funded in large part by the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. The CLPS program is aimed at encouraging private industry to launch agency payloads to the moon to collect needed science and engineering data before Artemis astronauts begin work on the surface near the lunar south pole later this decade. "NASA is investing in commercial delivery services to the moon to enable industry growth and to support long-term lunar exploration, helping the United States stay ahead in space innovation," said Nicola Fox, head of NASA's space science mission directorate. Athena is Intuitive Machines' second CLPS-sponsored lunar lander. The company's first lander, Odysseus, touched down on the moon on Feb. 22, 2024. But the spacecraft came down harder than expected and it was moving slightly to one side at the moment of touchdown. It apparently caught a footpad on the surface and tipped over on its side. The spacecraft still had power, however, and it sent back data for several days. This time around, multiple upgrades were put in place to insure a safe landing for Athena. "If you can routinely land on the moon, all the smart people, the scientists, and the engineers that want to fly things to the moon will now be willing to invest money, to build and engineer the systems that will help us live and work on the moon," Altemus said. "These are the initial highways or trails that open up a whole new region of exploration of the moon. Like the United States when it was very young, go west, right? This is like that. Just like that." Old-Fashioned Beef Stew Musk doubles down on email from federal employees, Trump backs him up Southwest plane nearly collides with business jet on Chicago runway
CBS News
26-02-2025
- Science
- CBS News
Commercial lunar lander Athena heading to the moon with a drill, rover and rocket-powered "hopper" to search for ice
With two commercial lunar landers already on their way, Houston-based Intuitive Machines has high hopes for its second robotic lander — Athena, the centerpiece of a multi-element, NASA-sponsored mission — launching Wednesday to help pave the way for human expeditions and search for ice. Liftoff from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center is targeted for 7:16 p.m. EST. Assuming an on-time launch and no major problems, the Athena lander is expected to descend to touchdown on a flat mesalike structure known as Mons Mouton on March 6. The landing site is just 100 miles from the moon's south pole. Another privately-built moon lander, Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost, was launched by a Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket on Jan. 15 and is on course to land on the moon early Sunday. Touching down near the center of Mare Crisium, it is equipped with 10 NASA-sponsored instruments to collect data needed for planned astronaut landings in the agency's Artemis program. Blue Ghost shared its Falcon 9 with yet another moon lander, this one built by the Japanese company ispace. It is on a longer, low-energy trajectory to the moon and is expected to land in May. What's different about the Athena lander The Athena lander represents a more complex mission with broader science goals. Intuitive Machines managers say they incorporated dozens of upgrades and improvements to insure a safe, upright landing after the company's first lander, Odysseus, tipped over during touchdown last February. "Every time you go, it's ... a roll-the-dice thing," said CEO Steve Altemus. "I think we have higher confidence, but we're also have a much more complicated mission this time. "This time we're flying with a deployable drill. We're flying with a deployable rover, we're flying with a drone, (a) rocket-powered drone that hops, flies off the lander and hops along the surface and down into a permanently shadowed (crater). "All those deployments and surface operations are new, and we're going to learn when we do those," he said. The Athena lander's Trident drill and a mass spectrometer will analyze the ultra-cold soil beneath the spacecraft. The lander also will deploy a small commercially-built rover and a rocket-powered hopper that will jump up to 300 feet high before bounding into a nearby, permanently shadowed crater in search of ice deposits. Ice would be a critical resource for future astronauts, if it can be extracted, because it can be turned into drinking water, air and even rocket fuel, providing in situ resources that otherwise would have to be carried up from Earth. Data collected by orbiting satellites indicate reservoirs of ice may be present in the cold, dark interiors of polar craters that never see the light of the sun. Athena's mission is the first to actually search for the suspected ice from the surface. The hopper, named Grace after software pioneer Grace Hopper, and the Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform rover built by a company called Lunar Outpost, will communicate with the Athena lander via cellular networking equipment provided by Nokia in a first-of-its-kind demonstration. Other spacecrafts tagging along A tiny microrover known as Yaoki, provided by Tokyo-based Dymon Co., will be dropped to the surface from the Athena lander. It will provide close-up images of the lunar soil, or regolith, and beam them back to Earth through Athena. In case all that is not enough, hitching a ride aboard the Falcon 9 are three more independent spacecraft, one provided by NASA and two from private companies. NASA's Lunar Trailblazer will be released on its own trajectory shortly after launch, headed for an orbit around the moon's poles. During its two-year mission, two instruments will study the nature of any ice that might be present in the soil below while measuring surface temperatures on a global scale. The second hitchhiker is a commercially-built probe called Odin, built by AstroForge, that's headed to deep space on an asteroid prospecting mission. It will be the first commercially-built probe to fly beyond the moon, heading for an asteroid flyby to look for potentially valuable mineral deposits. The third satellite, known as Chimera GEO, was provided by Epic Aerospace. It's a compact space tug built to move small satellites to different locations in space. The Grace hopper may end up the star of the show. Five hops are planned with the first carrying it to an altitude of about 65 feet to a landing another 65 feet from Athena. "On the second hop, we expect to go around 50 meters (164 feet) altitude. And on the third hop we'll go about 100 meters (328 feet) altitude," said Trent Martin, a senior vice president at Intuitive Machines. The fourth hop will carry Grace into a permanently shadowed crater some 1,500 from the lander. It's fifth and final hop, either commanded through the Nokia network or triggered by a backup timer, will carry Gracie back up and out of the crater. "The purpose of the demo is to show that we can reach extreme environments with technologies other than rovers," Martin said. "The idea is that if you have a really deep crater and you want to get down into that crater, why not do it with something like a drone?" The costs of the mission NASA paid Intuitive Machines $62 million to deliver the Trident drill and mass spectrometer, known collectively as Prime-1, to the moon. NASA's "tipping point" technology development program paid $15 million to help fund Nokia's cellular communications integration and another $41 million helps finance Intuitive's Grace hopper. Finally, NASA spent another $89 million on the Lunar Trailblazer satellite and mission operations. Total cost to NASA: $207 million. The mission was funded in large part by the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. The CLPS program is aimed at encouraging private industry to launch agency payloads to the moon to collect needed science and engineering data before Artemis astronauts begin work on the surface near the lunar south pole later this decade. "NASA is investing in commercial delivery services to the moon to enable industry growth and to support long-term lunar exploration, helping the United States stay ahead in space innovation," said Nicola Fox, head of NASA's space science mission directorate. Athena is Intuitive Machines' second CLPS-sponsored lunar lander. The company's first lander, Odysseus, touched down on the moon on Feb. 22, 2024. But the spacecraft came down harder than expected and it was moving slightly to one side at the moment of touchdown. It apparently caught a footpad on the surface and tipped over on its side. The spacecraft still had power, however, and it sent back data for several days. This time around, multiple upgrades were put in place to insure a safe landing for Athena. "If you can routinely land on the moon, all the smart people, the scientists, and the engineers that want to fly things to the moon will now be willing to invest money, to build and engineer the systems that will help us live and work on the moon," Altemus said. "These are the initial highways or trails that open up a whole new region of exploration of the moon. Like the United States when it was very young, go west, right? This is like that. Just like that."
