Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon
A robotic private spacecraft designed to provide crucial data for returning humans to the moon toppled over as it landed on the lunar surface, bringing an immediate and premature end to the mission, its operators said on Friday.
Athena, a probe launched by the Texas-based company Intuitive Machines (IM) last month, touched down about 250 miles from its intended landing site near the moon’s south pole on Thursday. Initially at least, it was generating some power and sending information to Earth as engineers worked to make sense of data showing an “incorrect attitude”.
On Friday, however, IM declared Athena dead.
“With the direction of the sun, the orientation of the solar panels, and extreme cold temperatures in the crater, Intuitive Machines does not expect Athena to recharge,” it said in a statement confirming that the 15ft (4.6 meter) spacecraft was on its side.
“The mission has concluded and teams are continuing to assess the data collected throughout the mission.”
The failure of Athena, which was packed with scientific probes and experiments that Nasa was relying on as it prepares to send astronauts back to the moon for the first time since 1972, was almost identical to IM’s first moon landing in February 2024.
The Odysseus spacecraft became the first private mission to reach the moon, but skidded across the surface, broke a leg and toppled over. Athena had the same tall, thin design that some experts had feared could lead to a repeat of the accident.
Lost with the Athena lander were hundreds of millions of dollars worth of equipment, including Nasa’s Trident regolith drill, which was to have excavated soil in a search for water and other life-supporting constituents.
The lander also carried three robotic mobile probes, one of which, the mobile autonomous prospecting platform (Mapp), built by the Colorado company Lunar Outpost, was the first commercially built rover to reach the moon.
Athena’s scheduled 10-to-14-day mission, known as IM-2, was one of 10 contracted by Nasa’s $2.6bn commercial lunar payload services (CLPS) program to encourage private industry to fly experiments and other equipment to the moon in advance of the arrival of the crewed Artemis 3 mission, currently scheduled for mid-2027.
Another was the successful landing on Sunday of Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission 1, which touched down near Mons Latreille, in Mare Crisium on the moon’s north-eastern near side.
Painting Athena’s failure in a more positive light, the IM statement said its arrival marked “the most southernmost lunar landing and surface operations ever achieved”.
“This southern pole region is lit by harsh sun angles and limited direct communication with the Earth,” it said.
“This area has been avoided due to its rugged terrain and Intuitive Machines believes the insights and achievements from IM-2 will open this region for further space exploration.”
