Intuitive Machines' second Moon mission seems to have gone as well as the first

The second lunar lander by Intuitive Machines has made its way to the Moon, but not without incident. The Athena vehicle may not be upright, which is what happened to the company’s Odysseus lander upon touchdown back in February. CEO Steve Altemus said during the post-landing news conference that he doesn’t believe that Athena is “in the correct attitude on the surface of the Moon yet again.”

Altemus said that the company will know for sure in the coming days once the team gets “a picture from the lunar reconnaissance orbital camera from above.” Data from the lander’s inertial measurement unit does seem to indicate a sideways orientation. We do know that Athena has touched down approximately 100 miles from the lunar south pole, which is where it's supposed to be.

Athena is part of the company’s IM-2 mission, which is a partnership with NASA to (finally) bring crewed missions back to the Moon. The lander also carries a bevy of payloads and scientific instruments designed to look for evidence of water on the lunar surface.

The company’s previous lander Odysseus was the first privately owned spacecraft to reach the Moon’s surface, though it toppled over. Rival company Firefly Aerospace successfully landed its own Blue Ghost spacecraft onto the lunar surface earlier this week, and this one landed upright.

As for Athena, it’s currently charging on the surface and is communicating with the mission team here on Earth. However, performance seems to be sub-optimal. “We’re not getting everything that we had asked for in terms of power generation and communications,” Altemus said. This could impact the lifespan of the lander’s ten-day mission, though the company has “done some power conservation steps as prudent measures to see how long and what objectives we can accomplish in the mission going forward.”

When the orientation is confirmed, the team can start figuring out how many of the payloads and instruments are in working order. These include a drill that searches for ice and a hopping drone vehicle that the company has scheduled to explore a permanently shadowed crater.

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