Watch Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 lunar landing live!
Houston-based company Intuitive Machines is poised to land its second spacecraft on the moon today (March 6). The lander, a Nova-C vehicle named Athena, is flying the IM-2 mission as a part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which contracts private companies to deliver agency science and technology payloads to the lunar surface. Now, the world will see if Intuitive Machines will deliver on that contract.
The company is targeting Thursday, March 6, at 12:32 p.m. EST (1732 GMT) for Athena’s soft touchdown on the lunar surface, with coverage available from multiple sources. The landing will be streamed live on the Space.com homepage, NASA’s NASA+ streaming service and on the Intuitive Machines YouTube channel. Coverage will begin at 11:30 a.m. EST (1630 GMT).
The $62.5 million IM-2 mission launched Feb. 26 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. After a journey spanning about 4.5 days, Athena arrived in lunar orbit Monday (March 3), where the spacecraft and Intuitive Machines operators in mission control have continued preparing the lander for its descent to the surface.
Related: Private Athena moon lander beams home amazing video of south pole touchdown site
What to expect today
Mission planners had prepared the lander to perform course-correction burns after reaching the moon, but Athena’s lunar orbit insertion was accurate enough not to need them, according to Intuitive Machines.
“Flight controllers confirmed that Athena completed lunar orbit insertion with enough accuracy to forego the IM-2 mission’s optional lunar correction maneuver,” the company said in a post on X. “Athena’s next planned maneuver is Descent Orbit Insertion (DOI), which is designed to lower her orbit to make a landing attempt at 11:32 [CST; 12:32 p.m. EST on March 6.”
Landing sequence:
— Descent Orbit Insertion
— Terrain Relative Navigation
— Powered Descent Initiation
— Pitch Over with Main Engine
— Hazard Detection and Avoidance
— Vertical & Terminal Descent
— Landing
When the time comes, Athena will have a complex dance to fly along its path to landing. From the far side of the moon, outside of regular communications range, the lander will perform a descent trajectory burn to shrink its orbit and put it on a flight path toward its landing site. At this point, Athena will fly autonomously through to its landing, utilizing onboard imaging systems and sensors to analyze the terrain below and make navigational determinations.
Once within range, Athena will begin a breaking maneuver called Powered Descent Initiation (PDI), firing up and throttling its landing engine until the spacecraft reaches about a mile away from its touchdown coordinates in Mons Mouton. Following PDI, the lander will flip upright using its main engine to begin a hazard detection and avoidance phase in order to ascertain a precise suitable landing spot.
Athena will then enter its vertical and then terminal descent phases, respectively, to slow its fall from about 10 feet (3 meters) per second to about 3 feet (1 m) per second once it reaches approximately 30 feet (9 m) from the surface. For the terminal phase, the lander switches to internal guidance only — no onboard cameras — and descends the final few feet to touch down on the surface.
After landing, Intuitive Machines expects a 15-second confirmation period for mission controllers to complete final checkouts. If all goes according to plan, Athena will then begin its mission on the surface of the moon.
Where will Athena land on the moon?
Athena is headed for Mons Mouton, a region near the moon’s south pole. Scientists believe that water ice deposits and other resources can be found in surface samples that the lander will drill. NASA researchers are eager to study water and other elements available on the lunar surface as the space agency prepares to return astronauts there as part of the Artemis program.
Water ice and other “in-situ” resources can be converted to things like, well, water, for one, which is heavy and costly to launch all the way to the moon. Water can also be broken down into its constituent elements, hydrogen and oxygen, which can be used to make things like rocket fuel. Through CLPS missions like IM-2, NASA is hoping to better understand the lunar environment, and how best it can be utilized to sustain future astronauts.
Related: NASA’s Artemis program: Everything you need to know
What is Athena’s mission?
IM-2 will hunt for water ice and other resources present on and just below the lunar surface. Athena is delivering NASA’s Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1) to the moon, which consists of two main components: the Regolith Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain (TRIDENT) and the Mass Spectrometer observing lunar operations (MSolo).
TRIDENT will dig down into the surface, and MSolo will analyze the results. PRIME-1 will retrieve a sample from up to 3 feet (1 m) beneath the surface to hunt for frozen water, and the mass spectrometer onboard will test that sample to determine if the water ice is there.
A secondary spacecraft called Grace, named for the pioneering computer scientist and mathematician Grace Hopper, will “hop” across the lunar surface within a 1-mile (1.6 kilometers) radius of Athena’s landing site, and will explore the permanently shadowed section of a nearby crater. Athena also carries a mini-rover — the Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP), built by Colorado company Lunar Outpost. These three robots will keep in touch using the moon’s first-ever 4G/LTE network — another payload on IM-2, which was provided by Nokia Bell Labs.
Another experiment on board Athena is the Laser Retro-Reflector Array (LRA) — a passive technology demonstration that doesn’t require a power source or mechanical components. Eight mirrors affixed to Athena’s exterior will test the reflection of lasers as a means of navigation reference for nearby and incoming spacecraft, similar to reflectors on an airport runway. The Athena lander will also release a smaller rover, called Yaoki, from the Japanese company Dymon.
After landing, Athena and co. will operate on the lunar surface for about 10 days, until the lunar night falls on Mons Mouton and darkness overtakes the spacecraft. Before then, however, the lander will witness Earth overtake the sun for a solar eclipse on the lunar surface on March 14, at about 2 a.m. ET (0700 GMT). Then, once the lander’s batteries are drained and the sun has set behind the lunar horizon, Athena’s mission will end.
Intuitive Machines, though, has a lot more planned. The company has already been awarded further CLPS contracts from NASA, and is currently planning through to IM-4.