A robotic Moon Lander will launch this week, marking the second lunar mission for a company that made history a year ago by becoming the first private company to successfully land on the surface of the moon.
The spacecraft, known as Athena, was built by intuitive machines based in Texas. It will carry an exercise and a set of instruments to study the chemical composition of the rocks and the ground below the surface of the moon.
The mission is part of the NASA Commercial Lunar Load Services Program, which the space agency established to support the development of Luna Landers by private sector companies.
The target landing site is a plateau in the Polar region of the South of the Moon, in an imposing mountain and flat -face called Monmoton.
The South Lunar Pole is of particular interest to NASA because it is believed that water ice is relatively abundant in the permanently shaded craters of the area. That water could help in the effort to eventually establish a permanent basis on the moon. Athena’s mission, in particular, will seek the presence of possible groundwater, which could be a critical resource for future missions crew to the moon.
It is expected that Athena will be launched on a Spacex Falcon 9 rocket on Wednesday at 7:17 pm et of the NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The same rocket will also launch a moon mapping satellite developed by NASA, known as Lunar Trailblazer.
The two missions are among the multiple space releases that are expected this week: NASA on Thursday also plans to send its Spherex Space Observatory to orbit. The satellite is designed to map the entire sky in 3D and study the origins of the universe.
Meanwhile, Spacex aims to launch its Starship Megarockt on an eighth test flight on Friday.
Then, during the weekend, a separate robotic landing, is built by the Firefly Aerospace company, will try to settle on the lunar surface.
After it is launched, Athena’s landing is expected to spend approximately one week traveling to the moon. If everything goes as planned on Wednesday, the spacecraft could land as soon as March 6.
The mission is also designed to test a 4G communications system, developed by Nokia, on the moon surface. Nokia officials have said that such a network could be used to transmit communications, telemetry or other data between different spacecraft on the lunar surface.
Several lunar rovers also travel along with the Athena spacecraft, including a vehicle for the size of a suitcase designed to wander through the landing site and take 3D images of the Polar Land of the South of the Moon. Lunar Outpost, a Commercial Commercial Company based in Colorado, built the Rover, which is called MAPP (abbreviation for a mobile autonomous prospecting platform).
At the same time, a rover of the size of a thumb called “Astroant” is intended to function as a bot of assistant, move on the roof of the Rover Mapp and take temperature readings to evaluate the health of the vehicle. Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed the little robot.
In addition, during its one week mission, Athena Lander will launch a drone designed to make a hop series around the landing site. Appeared Grace, the hops robot is expected to explore approximately 650 feet of ground in four hops, venturing into a nearby crater to scan ice deposits and the possible presence of hydrogen, according to intuitive machines.
The company scored its historic Luna Luna in February 2024, when its Odysseus land landed near a crater called Malapert A, near the South Lunar Pole. The milestone was not only the first successful landing of the Moon by a private company, but it was also the first time that an American spacecraft had landed on the moon in more than 50 years, since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
However, the Odysseus terrain ended up flying from side to the lunar surface, which hinders its ability to collect the expected amount of data (although the landing was considered a success).
This time, intuitive machines hope to hit the landing.
NASA finally plans to hire at least some of the companies that participate in the Commercial Program of Lunar Useful Services to transport load instruments and scientists to the lunar surface as part of the agency’s widest objective to return astronauts to the astronauts to the moon.
