Athena did not fall. But what happened to her?
Hours after the 15 -legged robotic ship reached the surface of the moon, closer to South Lunar Pole than it was any spaceship, remained unclear whether its touch was quiet enough to do its target work, or if it collapsed in the process, potentially limiting the scientific achievements of the mission.
“We are trying to appreciate exactly what happened in the last little one,” said Tim Crain, the leading official of intuitive car technology at a press conference.
The spaceship is almost identical to Odysseus, the land the company sent to the moon last year. Odysseus was the first operated commercial vehicle to successfully landed on the moon. But this success came with a star when the vehicle crashed shortly after reaching the ground.
It seems that it may have happened again.
At a press conference behind the ground, Steve Altemus, chief executive of intuitive cars, said the space ship had sent data contrary to whether he was standing or connected. But a sensor known as an inertial measurement unit offered a perhaps convincing data that Athena was on her side.
While heading to the lunar surface, laser instruments that measured Earth’s height were providing noisy data, which could have contributed to pale landing.
Until the latest background, Athena had performed much better than Odysseus Lander a year ago, said Dr. Crain of intuitive cars. “We were expecting a completely successful landing,” he said.
Mr. Altemus said it was too soon to determine how much of the planned mission could still be saved. Athena’s loads include a drill, three small rovers and a powerful rocket drone.
“When we get that full appreciation, then we will work closely with NASA’s science and technology groups to identify scientific objectives that are the highest advantage,” said Mr. Altemus. “And then we will understand what the mission profile will look like.”
The spaceship is not generating as much energy as it should, for sure because solar panels are not shown in the right direction.
Images from the cameras on the spaceship will help intuitive machines understand the orientation of the boat. Dr. Crain said that the spaceship probably located outside the planned landing area, but was sure to be still somewhere in Mons Mouton, a high plateau near South Pole that Athena would explore.
Images from NASA’s lunar detection orbiter, which will pass over the landing site, can determine the exact location of Athena.
It has been a busy week in spatial flight and on the moon. Intuitive Machines was the second company that reached the lunar area this week, after Firefly Aerospace, another space company in Texas, succeeded in the Mare Crisium region of Monday morning.
“Whenever humanity puts a land on the moon, it’s a good day,” said Dr. Crain.
The main customer of both missions is NASA under its commercial lunar load program, which employs private companies to obtain NASA -funded science and technology loads on the lunar surface. The NASA contract for this mission is up to $ 62.5 million, but intuitive machinery may not be paid full amount.
The shares of intuitive machinery, which trades under the name Lunr after being released in 2023, crashed after reports of ship problems. Her stock fell 20 percent on Thursday.
The main load in Athena is a NASA drill that will extract lunar soil to smell from a massive spectrometer for frozen water and other compounds. NASA officials said it may be possible for the exercise to work, even if the spaceship was not vertical. “There is no need to be directly where I can drill directly,” said Clayton Turner, Associate Administrator for the Director of NASA Spatial Technology Mission. “There are other options we can use as well.”
Also on board is a rover with the size of a small dog that will test a Nokia mobile network on the moon, and two smaller rovers, one built by the Technology Institute in Massachusetts and the other from a Japanese company. Intuitive machinery also planned to try a missile vehicle called a slap that can explore places that are not easily reached by Roves.
A parade of Landers Lunar is expected to continue throughout the year.
One of those spaceships is already in space. The Lander resistance from Japan’s Ispace was launched in the same Spacex Falcon 9 missile that sent Ghost Blue Firefly on its way. But it is taking a longer, more effective fuel route to the moon. It will enter the orbit around the moon around 6 May and try a landing a month later in Mare Frigoris, or in the cold sea, in the northern hemisphere of the moon.
In the fall, Pittsburgh’s astrobotic technology is planning to try to go to the moon flying a large land known as Griffin that will hold a trade rover created by a lunar post of Golden, Colo.
The most intriguing land is the one planned by Blue Origin, Rocket Company began by Jeff Bezos. Lander, known as Blue Moon Mark 1, will be the largest ship to ever settle on the moon, even larger than those that NASA astronauts received on the moon during the landing of Apollo More than 50 years ago.
Danielle kaye Contributed Reporting.