Athena, a commercially built spacecraft that is loaded with cutting-edge technology and science experiments, has officially touched down on the moon—likely askew but functioning.
“We don’t believe we’re in the correct attitude on the surface of the moon—yet again,” said Intuitive Machines’ CEO Steve Altemus during a press conference held three and a half hours after the landing. “I can say, though, that we are charging [Athena’s batteries] on the surface…. We are communicating…. We can send commands to the vehicle.”
It may take another couple of days to lock down Athena’s exact positioning on the moon, officials said. But Athena is now indisputably operational on the lunar surface. It has joined Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost, another commercial lander that made its moonfall on Sunday—upping the tally of active U.S. lunar surface missions to two. The back-to-back feats are considered important precursors to future crewed missions to the moon under NASA’s ambitious Artemis program.
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Tensions had run high near the end of the live watch party for Athena’s landing, which ended abruptly without a conclusive declaration of the lander’s overall health. “We can confirm Athena is on the surface of the moon,” said Intuitive Machines’ communication director Josh Marshall, somewhat tersely, at around 12:52 P.M. EST—20 minutes after the intended touchdown time. “We are working to figure out the orientation of the vehicle, which is important because those are our antenna systems that will determine how much signal we’re going to have” to determine Athena’s exact orientation. Later NASA also confirmed on X (formerly Twitter) that Athena had touched down on the moon at approximately 12:30 P.M. EST as planned.
“I think we can all agree, particularly today, that landing on the moon is extremely hard,” admitted Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, at the same conference. “And [IM-2, the mission that involves Athena] was aiming to land in a place that humanity has not been to before…. We look forward to actually being able to work with Intuitive Machines on a plan to return as much science data and technology data as we can.”
Unlike Blue Ghost’s 45-day voyage to the moon, Athena’s lasted for little more than a week. The spacecraft launched on February 26 and entered lunar orbit on March 3. From there it orbited the moon for about three days (while sending back live beauty shots). It then started its descent from orbit for landing early in the morning on March 6. And at 12:15 P.M. EST, Athena began its final maneuvers toward the surface. While most of the landing procedures unfolded without issue, no decisive announcements were made about the state of the vehicle as of 12:31 P.M. EST, which was when it was supposed to land. For the next 20 minutes, the mission room bustled with activity as scientists—and Altemus—joined operators in trying to figure out what was happening.
In some ways, the landing attempt was a chance at redemption for Intuitive Machines after Odysseus, Athena’s predecessor, had a skewed lunar touchdown that hindered its surface operations. Unfortunately, Athena appears to have suffered a similar fate. It’s worth noting, however, that even by merely reaching the surface, Athena has already brought humanity the closest we’ve ever been to the resource-rich lunar south pole—specifically, to Mons Mouton, a plateau that may be a landing spot for future Artemis astronauts as well. “We’re definitely on Mons Mouton,” confirmed Tim Crain, Intuitive Machines’ chief growth officer, during the press conference.
Athena remains responsive to commands to turn payloads on and off, Altemus reported, meaning that there’s still a good chance many of Athena’s tasks could proceed as planned. Once the lander’s exact orientation becomes more clear, Intuitive Machines will discuss with NASA which science and technology objectives are of the most priority.
Although its likely skewed position may reduce its capabilities, Athena nonetheless brings to the moon particularly rich array of demonstrations. For instance, NASA’s PRIME-1 (Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment 1) is a two-part instrument consisting of a drill and a mass spectrometer that will chemically analyze samples of lunar soil to search for the water ice and other volatile substances thought to exist in abundance in the crater-pocked terrain of the lunar south pole. Once such reservoirs have been scouted out, subsequent missions might potentially mine them for manufacturing potable water, breathable air and even potent rocket fuel. And then there’s the Micro Nova Hopper, also developed by Intuitive Machines with NASA funding, which will seek to demonstrate a new mode of lunar locomotion with a series of incremental hops toward a nearby 20-meter-deep, permanently shadowed crater.
Other payloads include Nokia’s Lunar Surface Communications System (LSCS), which uses a 4G/LTE system to establish a cellular network between each element of the mission, and a laser retroreflector array (LRA), a small device for accurately pinpointing Athena’s location on the lunar surface. These payloads, like the lander they rode to the moon, reflect an extensive partnership between NASA and private industry under the space agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.
For the next 10 days, both Athena and Blue Ghost are planned to operate around the clock at their respective locations: Athena is near the south pole, and Blue Ghost is around Mare Crisium, a crater on the moon’s northeastern near side. The landers will also be there during a total lunar eclipse, as seen from Earth, as the moon passes through our planet’s shadow and gains a bloodred glow on the night of March 13 and the early morning of March 14.
Despite the setbacks in establishing communications, Athena is the third successful lunar landing of NASA’s CLPS initiative. (The first CLPS mission, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander, suffered a propellant leak after its January 2024 launch that prevented it from reaching the moon at all.) In all, CLPS has booked $2.6 billion for various payloads and launches through 2028, each intended to incrementally progress U.S. readiness for a crewed lunar return. Currently, 14 different companies have been selected by NASA to deliver different payloads of science and technology experiments to the moon. For example, some of Blue Ghost’s payloads are demonstrating how to clean hardware caked in hazardous moon dust and how to run radiation-hardened computers on the lunar surface.
“With each CLPS mission, the United States is leading the way in expanding our reach and refining our capabilities, turning what was once dreams into reality,” said NASA acting Administrator Janet Petro in a press release that immediately followed Athena’s departure from Earth.
The U.S. is not alone, however, in its commercial efforts to rekindle lunar exploration. Japan’s Resilience lunar lander, built by the private company ispace, launched alongside Blue Ghost in January but is taking a much slower trajectory toward its destination. This launch marked a first in spaceflight history: never before had three landers been simultaneously bound for the moon. Meanwhile other nations—most notably China—continue their own programs of lunar exploration, with an eye toward independent human landings there.
Besides NASA’s sheer spending power, another key factor behind the sudden spate of moon landings is the private sector’s greater agility compared with the space agency’s generally slower process of mission development. Odysseus, for instance, left for the moon only about a year prior to Athena, giving Intuitive Machines little time to troubleshoot what went wrong with Odysseus’s landing to prevent similar issues from befalling Athena. Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace alike will each have about the same amount of time to respectively prepare for IM-3 and Blue Ghost Mission 2, missions that will involve the successors to their currently active spacecraft on the moon. The fact that the teams behind Athena and Blue Ghost managed to turn around technological revisions so quickly is an impressive feat, given the increasingly heated competition between the U.S. and China to take the lead in this 21st-century moon race.
“That’s building, improving and shipping a new spacecraft to go to the moon in nine months,” said Crain, who expressed that he previously had some reservations about how Athena’s improvements, compared with Odysseus, would perform out in space. And in many ways, Athena exceeded expectations, he said. “The future is bright for Intuitive Machines to land lots and lots of cargo on the moon,” Crain added.
“These science and technology demonstrations are more than payloads—they represent the foundation for future explorers who will live and work on the moon,” Petro said in NASA’s recent press release. “By partnering with American industry, we are driving innovation, strengthening our leadership in space, and preparing for sending humans farther into the solar system, including Mars.”
“We will be able to live and work on the lunar surface with humans. We will be able to land humans on Mars,” concluded Clayton Turner, associate administrator of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, at the same conference. “That work has to start with days like today.”
Editor’s Note (3/6/25): This article was edited after posting to include updates on the status of Athena.
