Latest news with #Odie
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Yahoo
Florida woman arrested after dog is found with urine trapped in matted fur, barely standing: affidavit
PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. (WFLA) — A Florida woman is facing animal cruelty charges after her dog was found barely standing with urine and faces trapped in its matted fur, an affidavit said. In December 2024, Charlotte County Animal Control was notified of a dog in poor condition under the care of its owner, 45-year-old Diana Holder. 21 horses die after Florida barn catches fire: officials An officer said the Yorkie mix, named Odie, had severely matted fur around its entire body, with feces and urine trapped around the back half, and could barely stand. 'I couldn't even tell where the front of the dog was in the back of the dog,' Animal Control Officer Brian Jones told NBC affiliate WBBH. Odie underwent immediate general anesthesia for an examination and to remove the matted fur, which was found to be several inches in length and width. The report said the dog had infected ears, skin ulcerations and an inability to see, while WBBH said Odie suffered a ruptured eye, very tong toenails, and sores as well. Animal Control services determined Holder to have abandoned her animal, causing Odie 'needless pain and suffering,' the affidavit said. Las Vegas veterinarian missing after apology for kicking horse in head WBBH said the 15-year-old Shitzu Yorkie mix suffered years of torture from Holder by not grooming him. Holder reportedly handed Odie over to a local shelter, telling them she could no longer care for him due to issues with her hand. 'It really should not have went on that long,' Jones added. 'For people who find themselves maybe with financial constraints, physical constraints, you know, there's all sorts of things that you can do.' Unfortunately, Odie spent his final days in a hospice foster home before he died of age, WBBH reported, as veterinarians claimed the injuries from Holder's abuse were not the cause of death. The department requested a monetary donation to the Charlotte County Animal Care Trust Fund. After a warrant was signed last week, Holder was arrested over the weekend at her Port Charlotte home, facing charges of cruelty to animals and confinement or abandonment of an animal. She is being held on a $5,000 bond and cannot be in possession of any animals. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
CNN
06-03-2025
- Science
- CNN
Intuitive Machines' Athena lunar lander heads in for moon landing attempt
A robotic lander named Athena is poised to make its final descent to the moon's surface, potentially marking the second lunar touchdown for a US company this week. Houston-based Intuitive Machines, which last year became the first private-sector company to soft-land a vehicle on the moon, said that its Athena spacecraft is on track to touch down at 11:32 a.m. CT (12:32 p.m. ET) Thursday. A live stream of the event, cohosted by NASA and Intuitive Machines, is set to begin about an hour before landing. If successful, the 15-foot-tall (4.6-meter-tall) Athena will join a lunar lander developed by another Texas-based company — Firefly Aerospace of Austin suburb Cedar Park — on the surface of the moon. Firefly's Blue Ghost vehicle made a safe, upright touchdown early Sunday morning. Both Athena and Blue Ghost are expected to operate on the moon's near side, but the two spacecraft will be perched roughly 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) apart, with Blue Ghost near the lunar equator and Athena situated close to the south pole — closer than any astronaut or vehicle has ventured before. Lunar landings are exceedingly difficult feats. About half of all attempts, including those by government space agencies and commercial companies, have ended in failure. Athena will need to complete an engine burn that will set it on a trajectory out of lunar orbit and toward the surface. The lander is then expected to coast for about an hour before it begins its final descent and will have to use sensors and cameras to navigate the crater-riddled terrain. During its final descent, the vehicle must rapidly shed speed, reducing its velocity by about 4,000 miles per hour (1,800 meters per second) before hitting the ground. The moon's south pole is considered crucial to the modern space race because scientists believe it is home to vast stores of water ice. The ice could be converted to drinking water, breathable air or even rocket fuel for missions that journey deeper into the cosmos. Athena is slated to land at a 60-mile-wide (100-kilometer-wide) plateau called Mons Mouton — which lies about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the lunar south pole. Then, the lander will get to work. Athena is on a scouting mission of sorts. The vehicle will use an array of robotic equipment — including a drill, hopper and rover — to scour the nearby area for confirmation that water ice is stored across the region. The lander is expected to operate for 10 days before lunar nightfall plunges it into darkness, rendering the spacecraft inoperable. A shot at redemption Before Intuitive Machines made history last year when its first lander, Odysseus — or 'Odie,' as the startup's employees called it — made a soft touchdown on the moon, only a handful of government space programs had pulled off that feat. The United States, China, India, Japan and the former Soviet Union were in that exclusive club. But Odie's trip, which also ventured near the south pole region, wasn't perfect. Before landing, mission teams found that the laser rangefinder designed to help navigate the lunar terrain and precisely measure altitude was not correctly hardwired. That misstep forced the company to rely on an experimental NASA payload, which happened to be on board, for navigational support to reach the lunar surface. Ultimately, Odie tripped onto its side, leaving valuable communications antennae and solar panels pointed in inopportune directions. As a result, Odie powered down days earlier than planned. Firefly briefly alluded to Odie's wayward orientation during live coverage of its moon landing this week, declaring that its Blue Ghost lander was the 'first fully successful' commercial vehicle to touch down on the moon. Still, the companies have expressed support for each other. 'I'll tell you something that is more exciting now than any other time in history is how many missions are flying to the moon,' Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus told CNN in February. 'Two Texas companies flying landers to the moon that theoretically will be on the surface at the same time operating different missions on the moon — that's just incredible for the United States.' Firefly and Intuitive Machines are both contractors under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. The CLPS program aims to spur private industry to develop relatively cheap robotic spacecraft that can explore the lunar surface before NASA sends its astronauts there later this decade. NASA's Artemis III mission aims to land humans on the moon for the first time in more than five decades by mid-2027. Athena's mission on the moon Hours after touching down Thursday, the Athena lander is expected to deploy a rover it's carrying that's called Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform, or MAPP, and built by Colorado-based company Lunar Outpost. The four-wheel, 22-pound (10-kilogram) vehicle will test new cellular communications equipment, work to create a 3D map of the moon's surface, and take pictures. The vehicle is also designed to collect a small soil sample. And though the sample — as well as the MAPP rover — will stay on the moon indefinitely, NASA has agreed to pay $1 to take ownership of the sample. It's a symbolic move meant to mark the first-ever commercial sale of space resources. Lunar Outpost CEO Justin Cyrus told CNN that the $1 from NASA is the only government funding the company will receive for this mission. 'This is our first shot, and the fact that this is a commercially funded rover with literally $1 from NASA … that's already like a pretty darn good place to be,' Cyrus said. After MAPP sets off, the Athena lander will deploy a miniature hopper — or a spacecraft designed to leap away from the landing site and explore a lunar crater to hunt for water. Intuitive Machines developed that vehicle with funding from NASA. But the primary payload on board Athena is NASA's PRIME-1 drill, which is designed to bear down into the moon's surface, scour for water ice and analyze the soil as it goes. If PRIME-1 can locate water just below the moon's surface, it would be 'extremely exciting,' Siegfried Eggl, an assistant professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, told CNN this week. 'If the drill would find a little bit of water-rich material right (near) the surface, that will be the best-case scenario,' Eggl said, 'because it means wherever you go on the south pole, you don't have to dive into craters, you can probably extract water really, really quickly.'
CNN
06-03-2025
- Science
- CNN
Intuitive Machines' Athena lunar lander heads in for moon landing attempt
A robotic lander named Athena is poised to make its final descent to the moon's surface, potentially marking the second lunar touchdown for a US company this week. Houston-based Intuitive Machines, which last year became the first private-sector company to soft-land a vehicle on the moon, said that its Athena spacecraft is on track to touch down at 11:32 a.m. CT (12:32 p.m. ET) Thursday. A live stream of the event, cohosted by NASA and Intuitive Machines, is set to begin about an hour before landing. If successful, the 15-foot-tall (4.6-meter-tall) Athena will join a lunar lander developed by another Texas-based company — Firefly Aerospace of Austin suburb Cedar Park — on the surface of the moon. Firefly's Blue Ghost vehicle made a safe, upright touchdown early Sunday morning. Both Athena and Blue Ghost are expected to operate on the moon's near side, but the two spacecraft will be perched roughly 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) apart, with Blue Ghost near the lunar equator and Athena situated close to the south pole — closer than any astronaut or vehicle has ventured before. Lunar landings are exceedingly difficult feats. About half of all attempts, including those by government space agencies and commercial companies, have ended in failure. Athena will need to complete an engine burn that will set it on a trajectory out of lunar orbit and toward the surface. The lander is then expected to coast for about an hour before it begins its final descent and will have to use sensors and cameras to navigate the crater-riddled terrain. During its final descent, the vehicle must rapidly shed speed, reducing its velocity by about 4,000 miles per hour (1,800 meters per second) before hitting the ground. The moon's south pole is considered crucial to the modern space race because scientists believe it is home to vast stores of water ice. The ice could be converted to drinking water, breathable air or even rocket fuel for missions that journey deeper into the cosmos. Athena is slated to land at a 60-mile-wide (100-kilometer-wide) plateau called Mons Mouton — which lies about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the lunar south pole. Then, the lander will get to work. Athena is on a scouting mission of sorts. The vehicle will use an array of robotic equipment — including a drill, hopper and rover — to scour the nearby area for confirmation that water ice is stored across the region. The lander is expected to operate for 10 days before lunar nightfall plunges it into darkness, rendering the spacecraft inoperable. A shot at redemption Before Intuitive Machines made history last year when its first lander, Odysseus — or 'Odie,' as the startup's employees called it — made a soft touchdown on the moon, only a handful of government space programs had pulled off that feat. The United States, China, India, Japan and the former Soviet Union were in that exclusive club. But Odie's trip, which also ventured near the south pole region, wasn't perfect. Before landing, mission teams found that the laser rangefinder designed to help navigate the lunar terrain and precisely measure altitude was not correctly hardwired. That misstep forced the company to rely on an experimental NASA payload, which happened to be on board, for navigational support to reach the lunar surface. Ultimately, Odie tripped onto its side, leaving valuable communications antennae and solar panels pointed in inopportune directions. As a result, Odie powered down days earlier than planned. Firefly briefly alluded to Odie's wayward orientation during live coverage of its moon landing this week, declaring that its Blue Ghost lander was the 'first fully successful' commercial vehicle to touch down on the moon. Still, the companies have expressed support for each other. 'I'll tell you something that is more exciting now than any other time in history is how many missions are flying to the moon,' Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus told CNN in February. 'Two Texas companies flying landers to the moon that theoretically will be on the surface at the same time operating different missions on the moon — that's just incredible for the United States.' Firefly and Intuitive Machines are both contractors under NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. The CLPS program aims to spur private industry to develop relatively cheap robotic spacecraft that can explore the lunar surface before NASA sends its astronauts there later this decade. NASA's Artemis III mission aims to land humans on the moon for the first time in more than five decades by mid-2027. Athena's mission on the moon Hours after touching down Thursday, the Athena lander is expected to deploy a rover it's carrying that's called Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform, or MAPP, and built by Colorado-based company Lunar Outpost. The four-wheel, 22-pound (10-kilogram) vehicle will test new cellular communications equipment, work to create a 3D map of the moon's surface, and take pictures. The vehicle is also designed to collect a small soil sample. And though the sample — as well as the MAPP rover — will stay on the moon indefinitely, NASA has agreed to pay $1 to take ownership of the sample. It's a symbolic move meant to mark the first-ever commercial sale of space resources. Lunar Outpost CEO Justin Cyrus told CNN that the $1 from NASA is the only government funding the company will receive for this mission. 'This is our first shot, and the fact that this is a commercially funded rover with literally $1 from NASA … that's already like a pretty darn good place to be,' Cyrus said. After MAPP sets off, the Athena lander will deploy a miniature hopper — or a spacecraft designed to leap away from the landing site and explore a lunar crater to hunt for water. Intuitive Machines developed that vehicle with funding from NASA. But the primary payload on board Athena is NASA's PRIME-1 drill, which is designed to bear down into the moon's surface, scour for water ice and analyze the soil as it goes. If PRIME-1 can locate water just below the moon's surface, it would be 'extremely exciting,' Siegfried Eggl, an assistant professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, told CNN this week. 'If the drill would find a little bit of water-rich material right (near) the surface, that will be the best-case scenario,' Eggl said, 'because it means wherever you go on the south pole, you don't have to dive into craters, you can probably extract water really, really quickly.'
CNN
27-02-2025
- Science
- CNN
Texas-based company that made historic soft touchdown on the moon launches high-stakes lunar excursion
Two robotic landers, one from the United States and the other from Japan, are currently in transit toward the moon — and a third has just joined them. The latest contender is a standout: The spacecraft, called Athena, was built by Houston-based Intuitive Machines, which so far is the only private sector company on Earth that has previously made a safe touchdown on the moon. The lunar lander hitched a ride to orbit atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which took off at 7:16 p.m. ET on Wednesday. Athena, on a mission dubbed IM-2, will later aim to make a daring descent toward the moon's south pole. The region is considered crucial to the modern lunar space race. Scientists suspect it is rich with stores of water ice, a resource that can be converted to breathable air, drinking water or even rocket fuel. As part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS program, Intuitive Machines' lander will be equipped with a suite of technology — including a drill, a small robotic 'hopper' and a tiny rover — that will allow it to scour the treacherous, crater-riddled terrain and determine whether there is evidence of water. 'It's very dynamic with a lot of moving parts,' Intuitive Machines cofounder and CEO Steve Altemus said of the mission in an interview earlier this month. The Athena spacecraft, a six-legged lander roughly the size of a telephone booth, will take about a week to reach its destination. The lander will have a truncated trajectory toward the moon compared with the landers that launched last month: Austin, Texas-based Firefly's Blue Ghost, which is slated to land this weekend, and a lander from Japan-based Ispace, which won't touch down on the moon before this spring. Second moon shot with bigger goals Intuitive Machines made history last year when its first lunar lander, Odysseus — or 'Odie,' as it was called by the startup's employees — made a soft touchdown on the lunar surface. Odie succeeded where many others had failed: About half of all lunar landers do not reach their intended destination or crash-land. And before the IM-1 mission, as Odie's journey was called, only a few nations' civil space programs had soft-landed spacecraft on the moon. But the trip wasn't perfect. A mission-threatening problem arose when Intuitive Machines engineers realized they had not hardwired a rangefinder — or laser designed to measure precise altitude — correctly. That misstep forced the company to rely on an experimental NASA payload that happened to be on board for navigational support. And while Odie safely touched down near the Malapert A crater in the moon's south pole region, the vehicle broke a leg and landed on its side, tipped over on the edge of a crater. Mission teams were able to reconfigure the spacecraft's communications method in order to retrieve valuable data from onboard science instruments. But the vehicle did not operate as long as Intuitive Machines had expected it would. With the IM-1 mission, Odie sought to test out several navigation technologies and gather scientific data using the NASA science instruments. Odie only had to perch in place as it transmitted data back home. With IM-2, however, the stakes are higher. The Athena lander comes equipped with several smaller robots it will deploy as well as a drill expected to bear down into the moon's surface, scouring for water ice. 'This is a much more complex and dynamic and exciting mission,' Altemus said. 'It's one thing to land on the moon. And now we're down to business on the second attempt.' Journey to Mons Mouton After reaching space aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, Athena is set to begin a 'a high-energy fastball pitch towards the moon,' as Altemus previously described the trajectory. The journey will include several nail-biting moments. 'Being a steely eyed missile man, I don't know that we freak out — but there are moments of increased anxiety,' Altemus said. 'We'll see when we go to light the engine the first time that level of anxiety. Everything (has to) come together perfectly to go right, to fire the engine, to put us on our way to the moon. I think that's the first one where it's really going to be a knot in our stomach.' At one point on its trip, Athena will also experience a solar eclipse, as Earth moves in front of the sun and blots out the light. 'We're going to get degraded power as we fly in the dark with no sun,' Altemus said, 'and when that happens, we'll have to turn off some extra equipment (to conserve power).' The spacecraft will separate from the rocket after reaching what's called a trans-lunar injection orbit, which is an elliptical path that extends about 236,000 miles (380,000 kilometers) above Earth. Athena will then light its own engines and nudge itself into the moon's gravitational well. After that milestone, Athena will deploy the smaller spacefaring vehicles that are hitching a ride on board the spacecraft. One is the NASA-made Lunar Trailblazer probe, which seeks to map the distribution of water on the surface as it orbits the moon. Another is a microwave-size spacecraft developed by California-based startup AstroForge that will continue into deep space in the hopes of scouting an asteroid for precious metals. About one week after launching from Florida, Athena will then make its final descent. The lander's destination is Mons Mouton — a plateau near the lunar south pole. And it's 'the closest landing site to the moon's south pole to date,' said Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, during a February 7 briefing about IM-2's science objectives. Mons Mouton also offers Athena 'the Goldilocks zone for sunlight,' Fox added. Though many areas of the lunar south pole are permanently in shadow — the precise locations where water ice may remain perpetually frozen — Mons Mouton offers enough sunlight to 'power a roughly 10-day mission while maintaining a clear view to Earth' to allow communication with the spacecraft, Fox said. Athena's landing site will be 'an extremely cold environment that we believe contains volatiles — which are chemical substances that can easily change from a liquid, to a solid, to a gas,' Fox said. 'These volatiles may contain trapped water ice.' But safely arriving at this destination will be a challenge. The areas closest to the moon's south pole are pockmarked with impact craters, making it difficult to find a patch of flat, even terrain that's safe for landing. 'IM-2 has to be a lot more accurate than IM-1,' said Intuitive Machines' navigation lead, Mike Hansen, during a company podcast interview last year. 'So, IM-1 we could get away with about a kilometer footprint. IM-2 is down to 50 meters (164 feet).' What Athena will do Altemus said the company is targeting March 6 for touchdown. Then, the real work begins. Immediately, 'we'll begin the campaign to drill into the surface, and we'll try to get 10 drill cycles (and we'll) go 10 centimeters at a time, all the way to a meter (3.3 feet) depth,' Altemus said, describing how NASA's water-hunting drill, called Prime-1, will operate. The tiny robotic Micro Nova Hopper on board IM-2 — developed by Intuitive Machines — will pop off the Athena lander. Named Grace after the late pioneer of software engineering Grace Murray Hopper, the diminutive craft will conduct several hops that reach up to 50 meters (164 feet) in the air before diving into a nearby crater that lives in permanent shadow. There, the robot will attempt to detect ice before hopping back out of the crater and transmitting data back home. A four-wheeled, microwave-size rover developed by Lunar Outpost will also roll out from Athena, packed with its own instruments and experimental technology. The robotic explorer will even carry a smaller, matchbook-size rover, called AstroAnt. The Lunar Outpost rover and Grace hopper will also each test out the use of cellular network on the moon as part of a NASA-sponsored experiment spearheaded by Nokia. All told, the IM-2 Athena lander is expected to operate for about 10 days on the moon. 'It's gonna be very dynamic, and a busy schedule,' Altemus said.
CNN
26-02-2025
- Science
- CNN
The Texas-based company that made history with a soft touchdown on the moon is back at the launchpad
Two robotic landers, one from the United States and the other from Japan, are currently in transit toward the moon — and this week a third will join them. The latest contender is a standout: The spacecraft, called Athena, is built by Houston-based Intuitive Machines, which so far is the only private sector company on Earth that has previously made a safe touchdown on the moon. The lunar lander, which will ride to orbit atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, is set to lift off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:17 p.m. ET on Wednesday. The space agency will live stream the event on NASA+. Athena, on a mission dubbed IM-2, will later aim to make a daring descent toward the moon's south pole. The region is considered crucial to the modern lunar space race. Scientists suspect it is rich with stores of water ice, a resource that can be converted to breathable air, drinking water or even rocket fuel. As part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS program, Intuitive Machines' lander will be equipped with a suite of technology — including a drill, a small robotic 'hopper' and a tiny rover — that will allow it to scour the treacherous, crater-riddled terrain and determine whether there is evidence of water. 'It's very dynamic with a lot of moving parts,' Intuitive Machines cofounder and CEO Steve Altemus said of the mission in an interview earlier this month. The Athena spacecraft, a six-legged lander roughly the size of a telephone booth, will take about a week to reach its destination. The lander will have a truncated trajectory toward the moon compared with the landers that launched last month: Austin, Texas-based Firefly's Blue Ghost, which is slated to land this weekend, and a lander from Japan-based Ispace, which won't touch down on the moon before this spring. Second moon shot with bigger goals Intuitive Machines made history last year when its first lunar lander, Odysseus — or 'Odie,' as it was called by the startup's employees — made a soft touchdown on the lunar surface. Odie succeeded where many others had failed: About half of all lunar landers do not reach their intended destination or crash-land. And before the IM-1 mission, as Odie's journey was called, only a few nations' civil space programs had soft-landed spacecraft on the moon. But the trip wasn't perfect. A mission-threatening problem arose when Intuitive Machines engineers realized they had not hardwired a rangefinder — or laser designed to measure precise altitude — correctly. That misstep forced the company to rely on an experimental NASA payload that happened to be on board for navigational support. And while Odie safely touched down near the Malapert A crater in the moon's south pole region, the vehicle landed on its side, tipped over on the edge of a crater. Mission teams were able to reconfigure the spacecraft's communications method in order to retrieve valuable data from NASA's six onboard science instruments. But the vehicle did not operate as long as Intuitive Machines had expected it would. With the IM-1 mission, Odie sought to test out several navigation technologies and gather scientific data using the NASA science instruments. Odie only had to perch in place as it transmitted data back home. With IM-2, however, the stakes are higher. The Athena lander comes equipped with several smaller robots it will deploy as well as a drill expected to bear down into the moon's surface, scouring for water ice. 'This is a much more complex and dynamic and exciting mission,' Altemus said. 'It's one thing to land on the moon. And now we're down to business on the second attempt.' Journey to Mons Mouton After reaching space aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, Athena will begin a 'a high-energy fastball pitch towards the moon,' as Altemus previously described the trajectory. The journey will include several nail-biting moments. 'Being a steely eyed missile man, I don't know that we freak out — but there are moments of increased anxiety,' Altemus said. 'We'll see when we go to light the engine the first time that level of anxiety. Everything (has to) come together perfectly to go right, to fire the engine, to put us on our way to the moon. I think that's the first one where it's really going to be a knot in our stomach.' At one point on its trip, Athena will also experience a solar eclipse, as Earth moves in front of the sun and blots out the light. 'We're going to get degraded power as we fly in the dark with no sun,' Altemus said, 'and when that happens, we'll have to turn off some extra equipment (to conserve power).' The spacecraft will separate from the rocket after reaching what's called a trans-lunar injection orbit, which is an elliptical path that extends about 236,000 miles (380,000 kilometers) above Earth. Athena will then light its own engines and nudge itself into the moon's gravitational well. After that milestone, Athena will deploy the smaller spacefaring vehicles that are hitching a ride on board the spacecraft. One is the NASA-made Lunar Trailblazer probe, which seeks to map the distribution of water on the surface as it orbits the moon. Another is a microwave-size spacecraft developed by California-based startup AstroForge that will continue into deep space in the hopes of scouting an asteroid for precious metals. About one week after launching from Florida, Athena will then make its final descent. The lander's destination is Mons Mouton — a plateau near the lunar south pole. And it's 'the closest landing site to the moon's south pole to date,' said Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, during a February 7 briefing about IM-2's science objectives. Mons Mouton also offers Athena 'the Goldilocks zone for sunlight,' Fox added. Though many areas of the lunar south pole are permanently in shadow — the precise locations where water ice may remain perpetually frozen — Mons Mouton offers enough sunlight to 'power a roughly 10-day mission while maintaining a clear view to Earth' to allow communication with the spacecraft, Fox said. Athena's landing site will be 'an extremely cold environment that we believe contains volatiles — which are chemical substances that can easily change from a liquid, to a solid, to a gas,' Fox said. 'These volatiles may contain trapped water ice.' But safely arriving at this destination will be a challenge. The areas closest to the moon's south pole are pockmarked with impact craters, making it difficult to find a patch of flat, even terrain that's safe for landing. 'IM-2 has to be a lot more accurate than IM-1,' said Intuitive Machines' navigation lead, Mike Hansen, during a company podcast interview last year. 'So, IM-1 we could get away with about a kilometer footprint. IM-2 is down to 50 meters (164 feet).' What Athena will do Altemus said the company is targeting March 6 for touchdown. Then, the real work begins. Immediately, 'we'll begin the campaign to drill into the surface, and we'll try to get 10 drill cycles (and we'll) go 10 centimeters at a time, all the way to a meter (3.3 feet) depth,' Altemus said, describing how NASA's water-hunting drill, called Prime-1, will operate. The tiny robotic Micro Nova Hopper on board IM-2 — developed by Intuitive Machines — will pop off the Athena lander. Named Grace after the late pioneer of software engineering Grace Murray Hopper, the diminutive craft will conduct several hops that reach up to 50 meters (164 feet) in the air before diving into a nearby crater that lives in permanent shadow. There, the robot will attempt to detect ice before hopping back out of the crater and transmitting data back home. A four-wheeled, microwave-size rover developed by Lunar Outpost will also roll out from Athena, packed with its own instruments and experimental technology. The robotic explorer will even carry a smaller, matchbook-size rover, called AstroAnt. The Lunar Outpost rover and Grace hopper will also each test out the use of cellular network on the moon as part of a NASA-sponsored experiment spearheaded by Nokia. All told, the IM-2 Athena lander is expected to operate for about 10 days on the moon. 'It's gonna be very dynamic, and a busy schedule,' Altemus said.
