Intuitive Machines Aims High for Second Moon Landing

Intuitive Machines has embarked on its second Moon landing attempt for NASA’s CLPS initiative with the launch of IM-2. Coming a year after the company’s first mission, IM-2 will see the Nova-C lander Athena attempt to deliver several high-priority NASA payloads to the lunar surface, alongside a miniature fleet of secondary robotic explorers. With high expectations and bigger ambitions on the horizon, the CLPS initiative’s first repeat contender is counting on a successful landing in a few days’ time.

The IM-2 mission began at Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, lifting off at 7:17 PM Eastern time on February 26th aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9. The rocket’s first stage, Booster 1083, landed downrange on SpaceX’s autonomous vessel A Shortfall of Gravitas, completing its 9th flight to date. Forty-three minutes later, after two burns from the rocket’s second stage, Athena separated from Falcon 9, coasting free on its way to the Moon.

Falcon 9 also carried three secondary payloads into orbit on this flight: NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer, a small Moon orbiter which will map for traces of water; Chimera GEO, a space tug from Epic Aerospace, and Astroforge’s Odin, intended to scout for resources at a near-Earth asteroid. The three spacecraft separated in sequence, about 20 seconds apart, completing a successful launch 47 minutes into flight.

Athena joins Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost and ispace’s HAKUTO-R landers for a record of three different Moon landers en route at the same time. But unlike the other two, which launched together in January, Athena is on a faster, more direct path towards its destination. This is partly due to its cryogenic liquid methane and oxygen fuel, which provides high performance but must be used quickly before it boils off into space. Athena will land at Mons Mouton near the lunar South Pole on March 6th, just eight days after launch—shortly after Blue Ghost and before HAKUTO-R.

Intuitive Machines landed a muddied success with their first mission, IM-1, in February of last year. With that lander, Odysseus, the team navigated a slew of technical challenges, culminating in the discovery that its laser rangefinder was not active to support navigation. Odysseus struck the moon earlier than planned during its blind descent, breaking a landing leg but coming to rest intact on its side. Limited data was transmitted from the lander’s payloads, enough for the company’s CEO Steve Altemus to declare an “unqualified success.” But the stakes for IM-2 will demand better.

Athena carries PRIME-1, a drill and mass spectrometer which will search for water ice in the lunar soil beneath the lander. The same combination of equipment is installed on NASA’s now-cancelled VIPER rover, which was supposed to provide a more thorough ground-truth of the lunar South Pole. Volatiles like water ice are crucial to supporting future human missions to the Moon through Artemis, so while VIPER hangs in limbo, Athena may provide NASA’s only chance in the near future to search for these resources.

Another of Athena’s key payloads is LSCS, a lunar 4G/LTE communications demo provided by Nokia. This technology will provide high-performance communications systems for future Artemis missions, including between Artemis III astronauts in their AxEMU space suits and the Starship Human Landing System. During IM-2, LSCS will communicate with the host of secondary vehicles carried by this mission: a miniature “hopper” lander called Micro Nova, a commercial rover called MAPP built by Lunar Outpost, and the tiny YAOKI rover from Japanese company Dymon. Each of these vehicles will attempt to explore far from Athena; Micro Nova could fly payloads up to 25 kilometers away.

But there’s still more in the balance than the payloads onboard Athena itself. For Intuitive Machines, which has two more Nova-C missions contracted for NASA and commercial customers, IM-2 will prove—or disprove—their ability to learn from their mistakes and achieve consistent results. After the tenuous success of IM-1, anything less than a perfect landing is stagnation. Furthermore, the company needs to demonstrate this rigor to secure a future for their other products. The upcoming Nova-D lander is meant to carry larger, even more valuable payloads, such as a Lunar Terrain Vehicle or even the orphaned VIPER.

In the bigger picture, NASA’s CLPS initiative has achieved one partial success in IM-1 out of two landing attempts so far. By the time Athena reaches the surface, the number of attempts will have doubled to four. The first week of March could put this program at about a 75% success rate—or less than 25%. And while Blue Ghost could be called its company’s token first attempt, Athena will mark CLPS’ first repeat landing. The key premise of CLPS is that “sometimes, failure is an option,” but that iterative development will bring cheaper results for NASA. In a few days’ time, Intuitive Machines and Athena will put that notion to the test.