Intuitive Machine’s lunar lander Athena set to blast off to the moon

A personal house mission will launch to the moon this week, aiming for the southern-most level ever visited on the lunar floor. The Athena spacecraft, made by US-based Intuitive Machines, is because of launch onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Area Heart in Cape Canaveral, Florida at 12:17am GMT on 27 February (7:17pm EST on 26 February). A number of different missions will even hitch a journey on the identical rocket, together with an asteroid-mining expedition.

Intuitive Machines turned the primary personal firm to efficiently land on the moon final 12 months, when its Odysseus spacecraft touched down close to the moon’s south pole. Although the spacecraft’s devices remained operational, Odysseus made a clumsy touchdown and tipped over, limiting the quantity of knowledge its devices might acquire and reducing the mission brief.

The corporate hopes for a cleaner touchdown when Athena begins its descent in direction of the top of March. Its deliberate touchdown web site is close to the moon’s tallest mountain, Mons Mouton, which is about 60 kilometres from the south pole, making Athena’s try probably the most southerly strategy of the moon ever. If the craft lands efficiently, it can then function for a few weeks, equal to a single lunar day, earlier than the lunar night time begins and energy is misplaced.

Athena will carry greater than 10 devices and missions from each NASA and different personal corporations. That isn’t all – the identical Falcon 9 that can launch Athena to the moon can also be carrying three unrelated spacecraft. These are an asteroid-prospecting spacecraft from house firm AstroForge, which, within the first mission of its variety, will survey an area rock for potential mineable metallic later this 12 months. Additionally alongside for the journey is NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer satellite tv for pc, which is able to map water on the moon and search for future touchdown spots. The third spacecraft, constructed by Epic Aerospace, is designed to assist different satellites transfer between orbits.

As soon as Athena makes its touchdown, a NASA instrument will drill as much as a metre into the lunar soil to take samples, which it can then look at for doable water deposits and different chemical compounds. NASA hopes to study whether or not these are current in excessive sufficient portions for use by future astronauts as a part of the company’s deliberate crewed Artemis moon landings, that are scheduled to launch in 2027.

A number of small rovers will probably be additionally launched close to the touchdown web site, together with Japanese firm Dymon’s plant-pot-sized Yaoki rover, which, at 0.5 kg, is the lightest lunar rover ever. The heavier 10kg Cellular Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP), constructed by house firm Lunar Outpost, will discover and create a 3D map of the touchdown web site, in addition to check how a 4G cellphone community, constructed by Nokia, features within the lunar atmosphere. Sitting on high of MAPP will probably be a a lot smaller, ant-sized robotic constructed by researchers on the Massachusetts Institute of Know-how, which is able to take temperature readings of the larger rover because it drives.

Intuitive Machines will even deploy a suitcase-sized hopping robotic, known as Grace, which is able to carry out a sequence of 4 hops, leaping as much as 100 metres into the air and travelling a distance of round 200 meters till it lands in a deep crater with completely shadowed areas. Scientists have seen proof that these areas, which don’t get hotter than -170°C (-274°F), comprise usable ice deposits, however one has by no means been instantly visited. Grace will scan the underside of this crater, which is round 20 metres down, for about 45 minutes, earlier than leaping out once more.