Intuitive Machines Lander Touches Down on Moon, But Lands Wonky
Currently, commercial lunar missions with NASA connections are all the rage. Firefly Aerospace Card on the Moon Login of the Blue Ghost Mission On March 2, the intuitive machine hopes for similar success in the IM-2 mission Thursday morning. Athena Lander reached the surface of the moon, but not everything went smoothly.
By the end of the landing live broadcast, the intuitive machine had confirmed the touchdown, but there were still two big problems. Where is Athena? What is its location?
“We think we have an incorrect attitude toward the moon’s surface,” Steve Altemus, CEO of Intuitive Machines, said in an afternoon press conference. Attitudes point to the direction of the lander. It seems the vehicle may be incorrect.
Athena made adjustments during landing to avoid surface hazards, which led to uncertainty in its exact location.
“I believe we are near the site of the expected landing,” Altermos said. NASA’s lunar reconnaissance orbit will try to capture Athena’s view from above to determine where it landed.
There are some positive signs. Intuitive machines keep in touch with Athena and its cargo. The lander is generating solar energy. Once the company and NASA have sorted out Athena’s status and power resources, they will develop a scientific plan to make the most of the mission.
Athena is expected to send back images from the surface, which should help the team determine the direction of the lander.
How to re-watch IM-2 landing
Most of the landing process went well. Athena still had contact with the intuitive machine and even sent back the image from the descent.
NASA free broadcast live landing coverage NASA streaming service Starting about an hour from the touchdown. NASA Plus can be used through the website or NASA Application. The broadcast is also Youtube If you want to re-watch.
What is IM-2?
The Nova-C Lunar Lander of Intuitive Machines is nicknamed Athena, and carries a suite of scientific instruments and robots, including a dancing drone, multiple small wanderers and NASA drills designed to dig 3 feet underground. The lander’s cargo includes NASA and commercial payloads.
The mission is part of NASA’s commercial lunar payload service program, a space agency’s effort to send landers and wanderers to the moon using private companies. NASA’s ambitious goal through its Artemis Moon program is to return astronauts to the moon’s surface and build a long-term human presence there. IM-2 serves this vision.
“The lander is carrying NASA technology, which will measure the potential presence of resources that future explorers can extract and use from lunar soil to produce fuel or breathable oxygen,” he said. The Space Administration says In Tuesday’s update.
When does the IM-2 moon land?
The IM-2 mission withdrew some views of the earth after it was launched in February.
Athena’s trip began on February 26, released on the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in Florida. Intuitive machine-targeted task login, Thursday at 9:32 a.m. The landing site is located near the South Pole of the Moon, which is the main target area of NASA and the area for future human exploration.
The timing is partly determined by the supply of sunlight on the moon’s surface. The Athena lander uses solar energy. The intuitive machine expects that if everything goes well, the logger will run for about 10 days.
MIT’s Moon Stays
There is another way to participate in the task. Comcast’s XFINITY service and MIT Media Lab have collaborated to conduct real-time coverage. MIT participates in the IM-2 Mission’s Lunar Outpost mobile automatic exploration platform Rover. MAPP is designed to use sensors and visual cues to browse rough terrain.
MIT Stay on the moon The program has educational resources and provides Live broadcast login and other key events in the mission. MIT has been planning for later real-time feed involving Mapp Rover, but whether the rover can be deployed.
Xfinity X1 customers can access mission resources and live broadcasts by saying “to the moon” to the sound remote.
Why IM-2 is important
Crew space missions often attract a lot of attention. IM-2 may not have humans, but it deserves attention to fascinating science. Phil Metzger, a research professor at Florida Central University, highlights the mission’s polar resource ice mining experiment 1.
The purpose of Prime-1 is to measure ice in the lunar soil, which is important.
“Ice contains records of the internal solar system history that may help us understand how water and carbon were delivered to Earth’s system billions of years ago,” Metzger told CNET. “This is crucial to know how many other planets may be able to support life in the Milky Way, so it helps answer the question, ‘Are we alone in the universe?’” You can’t be more profound than that.
NASA hopes Prime-1 can help researchers understand the availability of water. Water is transported in space and is expensive, so future human explorations will hope to use what already exists on the moon.
After Athena’s login, it will take some time to determine whether Prime-1 can achieve its goals.
It’s hard to land on the moon
Athena sent back a selfie on the moon in orbit around the moon.
Many missions have tried and failed to successfully land on the moon. Russia’s Luna-25 mission crashed into the moon in 2023. Beresheet mission in Israel and India Chandrayaan-2 Vikram Lander Both crashed in 2019.
“Lunar Landers is challenging, not only because the lunar environment is so harsh and exotic, but because we fly very little,” Metzger said.
Landing on the moon is much more difficult than on Earth.
“The moon has enough gravity to land easily, but no atmosphere can help lower the lander,” said Josh Colwell, deputy director of the Florida Central Academy of Sciences. “The surface is very rough on all spatial scales, so the tilt of the lander is a real risk.”
It’s not just having good landing hardware. The software and systems on board must analyze the surface to help guide the lander to a safe location.
The moon’s landing site is exciting, partly because the machine has to navigate to ensure a safe touchdown.
You may be wondering what happened to the IM-1 mission. Intuitive machine delivered Odysseus Rand Arriving on the moon in 2024, but not everything is right. The lander surfaced, but eventually sideways, creating obstacles in its scientific work.
Athena’s unexpected landing status is reminiscent of what happened to IM-2, but the impact on mission scientific goals will take time to understand. Still hope it will do some of the expected work.
Watch the following: Watch Intuitive Machine 2 Login and Descent Moon Images
