Intuitive Machines’ Athena lunar landing mission concludes after one day due to wayward landing
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The intuitive machines, a Houston -based company, which is scheduled to provide a historic water hunting mission to the southern pole of the moon, announced on Friday that they are Athens Lander It has decreased just one day after reaching the moon.
Athens was expected to work for approximately 10 days before falling when the lunar night fell on the location of the spacecraft in Mons Mouton, a plateau located about 100 miles (160 km) of the Antarctic.
But the photographs presented by Lander before they are played confirm that the car is lying on its side.
“With the direction of the sun, the direction of the solar panels, and severe cold temperatures in the hole, the intuitive recharge machines do not expect Athens,” the company said in a statement. “The mission has ended and the teams continue to evaluate the data collected during the mission.”
However, the intuitive machines highlighted that although Athens did not work as intended, Lander managed to run data and send them shortly after landing. This mission made “the far south of the moon and the surface processes it achieved.”
The intuitive machines also said that Athens “is able to accelerate many features of programs and loads, including NASA’s PRIME-1 wing, before being exhausted by Lander batteries.”
It is unclear whether this means that the Prime-1, a exercise that was expected to dig in the moon’s surface to search for water, or was able to operate or collect data or use its sensors to analyze soil.
The company was not specifically eating other loads on ATHena Lander. But the location of the moon, which is based in Colorado, and which provided Rover, was expected to drive his car from landing about six hours after a landing on Thursday, in a post on the social media platform x Unable.
Intuitive machinery officials said at a press conference on Thursday that some scientific tools and technology on ATHENA managed to work while crossing into the moon and in the orbit of the moon before yesterday’s landing.
Tim Crane, the chief technology employee in intuitive machines, highlighted that Athens took images of the Antarctic area of the moon, describing them as an exciting development that helps scientists understand this area that suffers from the moon’s hole.
Moon declining challenges
Athena’s early closure reminds us The last mission of the intuitive lunar machinesWhich was placed on the ground called Odysseus in the same distinctive southern pole area in February 2024.
Odysseus also fell alongside her, but she managed to work for about six days, although the antennas were indicating an unexpected direction, making it difficult to collect large amounts of data.
The company also revealed on Friday that it was able to determine the landing of Athens about 820 feet (250 meters) from the intended landing site. At a press conference on Thursday about the position of Athens, only intuitive machines officials said that the exact location of the car was not known, but it is likely that it would not land within the (50 meters) area targeted by the company.
The intuitive machines have developed the ATHena Lunar Lander program as part of the NASA lunar load services program, according to which the agency exceeds relatively fixed price contracts for private sector companies in an attempt to stimulate innovation and reduce the cost of obtaining automatic exploration vehicles to the moon.
At the press conference on Thursday, Nikki Fox, the assistant director of the NASA Science Mission Directorate, was asked about this approach and whether NASA rewrites its commitment to low -cost missions.
In her response, Fox noticed that NASA has many science and exploration tasks – including Blue Ghost Lunar Lander From Cedar Park, Firefly Aerospace, based in Texas. The automatic explorer works near the equator in the moon after a successful landing on March 2.
“We meet, celebrate each other’s success, and sympathize with challenges,” said Fox.
Steve Altimos, CEO of the company, said on Thursday that the intuitive machines will carefully analyze data from Athens over the next thirty days in a process referred to as “hot washing”.
“We are preparing a set of recommendations for what happened well, what is wrong, and what should be fixed for the next task.”
The company was planning to launch a third drop, called IM-3, about a year from now. But Altemus suggested that the company change as the company is following a satellite contract that can transfer data from the moon.
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