IM-2 lunar lander on its side after touchdown

Updated 6 p.m. Eastern with comments from post-landing briefing.WASHINGTON — The second lunar lander mission by Intuitive Machines reached the surface of the moon March 6 but appears to be resting on its side, hampering its planned science and technology demonstration mission.At a briefing about three and a half hours after the Athena lander reached the south polar region of the moon on the IM-2 mission, executive said the lander was “somewhat on its side” although its exact orientation remains uncertain.“We’ve been very successful to this point, however, I do have to tell you that we don’t believe we’re in the correct attitude on the surface of the moon,” Steve Altemus, chief executive of Intuitive Machines, said at the briefing.Later, he said that engineers were getting conflicting data after landing that suggested the engine was firing in an idle mode, which would require the lander to be upright, while data from an inertial measuring unit (IMU) on the lander indicated the lander is on its side. The engine data turned out be gas in its combustion chamber. “That IMU data is the piece of data that says we’re oriented somewhat on our side.”It wasn’t clear what caused the spacecraft to land on its side, but Altemus and Tim Crain, senior vice president of Intuitive Machines, said laser altimeters were providing some “noisy” data during testing in lunar orbit. “It just remained noisy all the way until touchdown,” Crain said. “That’s where we’re going to look as we investigate what impact that might have had on the system.”Despite being on its side, the lander is generating some power and is transmitting telemetry back to Earth. Crain said that engineers are trying to piece together the exact attitude and orientation of the lander, which will help them determine how much power they can generate and the thermal conditions of the spacecraft.That will help determine what payloads can operate and to what degree. “We know that we can communicate with the payloads. We can talk to them and command them on and off,” Altemus said. Once they better understand the state of the lander, he said they will work with the payloads to prioritize their activities “that would allow us to capture some mission objectives.” They added it was unclear how it would affect deployment of a NASA-provided drill as well as a “hopper” vehicle developed by Intuitive Machines and two small rovers.The flawed landing took place less than five days after Firefly Aerospace had a successful landing of its Blue Ghost 1 lander elsewhere on the moon. “They both have different challenges,” Nicky Fox, NASA associate administrator for science, said of the two lander missions at the briefing. “I certainly don’t want to make it sound like Firefly was an easy landing. Landing on the moon is hard.”Investors in Intuitive Machines were not comforted by those comments, though. Shares in the company closed 20% lower March 6, with the drop taking place after the landing. In after-hours trading, shares fell even further, down by another third two hours after the markets closed.Descent into uncertaintyThe Athena lander was scheduled to land around 12:32 p.m. Eastern on the IM-2 mission after performing a long braking burn, then changing orientation to perform a vertical landing. Telemetry displayed by the company on its webcast appeared to show the lander conducting that braking burn as expected, but closer to the landing time the telemetry appeared frozen or garbled, including at one point where it indicated the lander was several kilometers below the surface.For about 20 minutes after the planned landing time, mission controllers reported getting telemetry that indicated the lander was on the surface and generating power. However, the orientation of the lander was uncertain.“Alright team, keep working the problem,” Crain, flight director for the landing, said in mission control about 15 minutes after the scheduled landing time. He said controllers were shutting down unnecessary systems now that the lander appeared to be on the surface.“We are generating power. We are communicating through our telemetry radio and we are working to evaluate exactly what our orientation is on the surface,” he said. That included analyzing images taken by the lander after landing, although those were not immediately released.IM-2 mission plansThe intended landing site was Mons Mouton, a plateau about the size of Delaware in the south polar region of the moon. The region is of strategic interest to NASA given the potential for regions around the south pole to have water ice deposits that are both a priority for scientists and could support future human expeditions. “We hope that that’s going to provide opportunities for extraordinary science in extraordinary places,” said Fox at a pre-launch briefing.IM-2 launched Feb. 26 on a Falcon 9, which placed the Athena lander on a translunar trajectory. The spacecraft performed a 492-second burn of its main engine early March 3, entering orbit around the moon. A maneuver at 5:33 a.m. Eastern March 6 put the lander into its descent orbit, from which it attempted the landing.The lander’s main NASA payload is the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment 1 (PRIME-1). It features a drill designed to penetrate up to a meter into the surface and a spectrometer to measure any volatiles, like water ice, the drill passes through below the surface.PRIME-1 is flying as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program under a task order currently valued at $62.5 million. That task order also includes a laser retroreflector, a small passive payload NASA includes on many lunar landers.Intuitive Machines is flying several commercial payloads on IM-2, including its own Micro Nova Hopper, a vehicle designed to hop across the lunar surface using its own propulsion system. The hopper, named Grace, carries a camera system and instruments the German aerospace agency DLR and Hungarian company Puli Space. Intuitive Machines plans to perform at least five hops of Grace during the mission, including into a crater near the landing site.Another commercial payload is a communications system from Nokia, which will test the ability to use 4G/LTE networks on the moon. It will attempt communications both with the Grace hopper and another commercial payload, the Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform rover from Lunar Outpost. Both the Nokia payload and Grace are supported by awards from NASA’s Tipping Point space technology development program.Also on board is Yaoki, a very small rover from Japanese company Dymon Co. Ltd.; Freedom, a data center from Lonestar Data Holdings; and thermal protection technologies from Columbia Sportwear.IM-2 is the second mission by Intuitive Machines, both flown as part of the NASA CLPS program. The IM-1 mission landed on the moon in February 2024 but hit the surface faster than expected, snapping a landing leg and causing the Odysseus lander to fall on its side. The company was still able to operate the lander for about a week, collecting some data from its payloads.The company blamed the hard landing on a laser altimeter that could not operate because a safety system was not removed from it before launch as intended. Trent Martin, senior vice president of space systems at Intuitive Machines, said before launch that the company addressed 85 things that did not go according to plan on IM-1, like that laser altimeter, on IM-2.This mission is the fourth for the CLPS program overall. Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander launched in January 2024 but suffered a problem with its propulsion system hours after launch, preventing the spacecraft from attempting a landing.Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 1 lander successfully landed on the moon March 2, a month and a half after its launch. That lander, carrying a set of 10 NASA payloads, will operate at its landing site in Mare Crisium in the northeastern quadrant of the near side of the moon through lunar sunset March 16.