US agency targets second moon touchdown with drill, rovers, drone

A drill to seek for ice. A 4G community check. Three rovers and a first-of-its-kind hopping drone.

After turning into the primary personal agency to land on the Moon final yr, Intuitive Machines is aiming for its second lunar landing on Thursday, carrying cutting-edge payloads to help future human missions.

The Houston-based firm is focusing on no sooner than 1732 GMT at Mons Mouton, a plateau close to the lunar south pole — farther south than any robotic has ventured.

NASA will livestream the touchdown an hour earlier than landing as Athena, the 4.8-metre hexagonal lander — in regards to the peak of a giraffe — begins its descent.

“It seems like this mission is straight out of one in every of our favorite sci-fi motion pictures,” mentioned Nicky Fox, NASA’s affiliate administrator for science.

Intuitive Machines’ first touchdown in February 2024 was a landmark achievement however ended with its lander tipping onto its facet, an final result the corporate is decided to keep away from this time.

The strain is on after Texas rival Firefly Aerospace efficiently landed its Blue Ghost lander on Sunday, turning into the second personal firm to succeed in the Moon.

Each missions are a part of NASA’s $2.6-billion Industrial Lunar Payload Providers (CLPS) program, which companions with personal trade to chop prices and help Artemis, the initiative to return astronauts to the Moon and ultimately attain Mars.

A hopper named Grace

Athena is focusing on highland terrain about 160 km from the Moon’s south pole, the place it should deploy three rovers and a singular hopping drone named Grace, after late laptop science pioneer Grace Hopper.

Considered one of Grace’s boldest targets is a hop right into a completely shadowed crater, a spot the place daylight has by no means shone — a primary for humanity.

Whereas NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter proved flight is feasible on Mars, the Moon’s lack of environment makes conventional flying inconceivable, positioning hoppers like Grace as a key know-how for future exploration.

MAPP, the biggest of Athena’s rovers and roughly the scale of a beagle, will help in testing a Nokia Bell Labs 4G mobile community linking the lander, itself, and Grace — know-how designed to someday combine into astronaut spacesuits.

Yaoki, a extra compact rover from Japanese firm Dymon, is designed to outlive drops in any orientation, making it extremely adaptable.

In the meantime, the tiny AstroAnt rover, geared up with magnetic wheels, will cling to MAPP and use its sensors to measure temperature variations on the bigger robotic.

Additionally aboard Athena is PRIME-1, a NASA instrument carrying a drill to seek for ice and different chemical compounds beneath the lunar floor, paired with a spectrometer to analyse its findings.

Sticking the touchdown

Earlier than any experiments can start, Intuitive Machines should stick the touchdown — a problem made tougher by the Moon’s lack of environment, which guidelines out parachutes and forces spacecraft to depend on exact thrusts and navigation over hazardous terrain.

Till Intuitive Machines’ first mission, solely nationwide house companies had achieved the feat, with NASA’s final touchdown relationship again to Apollo 17 in 1972.

The corporate’s first lander, Odysseus, got here in too quick, caught a foot on the floor and toppled over, chopping the mission brief when its photo voltaic panels couldn’t generate sufficient energy.

This time, the corporate has made vital upgrades, together with higher cabling for the laser altimeter, which gives altitude and velocity readings to make sure a protected landing.

Athena launched final Wednesday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which additionally carried NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer probe — however not the whole lot has gone easily. Floor controllers are struggling to re-establish contact with the small satellite tv for pc, designed to map the Moon’s water distribution.

These missions come at a fragile time for NASA, amid hypothesis that the company could cut back and even cancel the crewed Moon missions in favour of prioritizing Mars — a objective championed by President Donald Trump and his advisor Elon Musk.