By Joey Roulette
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Intuitive Machines sent final commands to its uncrewed Athena spacecraft on Thursday as it closed in on a landing spot near the moon’s south pole, the company’s second attempt to score a clean touchdown after making a lopsided landing last year.
After launching atop a SpaceX rocket on Feb. 26 from Florida, the six-legged Athena lander has flown a winding path to the moon some 238,000 miles (383,000 km) away from Earth, where it will attempt to land closer to the lunar south pole than any other spacecraft.
The landing is scheduled for 12:32 pm ET (1732 GMT). It will target Mons Mouton, a flat-topped mountain some 100 miles (160 km) from the lunar south pole.
Five nations have made successful soft landings in the past – the then-Soviet Union, the U.S., China, India and, last year, Japan. The U.S. and China are both rushing to put their astronauts on the moon later this decade, each courting allies and giving their private sectors a key role in spacecraft development.
India’s first uncrewed moon landing, Chandrayaan-3 in 2023, touched down near the lunar south pole. The region is eyed by major space powers for its potential for resource extraction once humans return to the surface – subsurface water ice could theoretically be converted into rocket fuel.
The Houston-based company’s first moon landing attempt almost exactly a year ago, using its Odysseus lander, marked the most successful touchdown attempt at the time by a private company.
But its hard touchdown – due to a faulty laser altimeter used to judge its distance from the ground – broke a lander leg and caused the craft to topple over, dooming many of its onboard experiments.
Austin-based Firefly Aerospace this month celebrated a clean touchdown of its Blue Ghost lander, making the most successful soft landing by a private company to date.
Intuitive Machines, Firefly, Astrobotic Technology and a handful of other companies are building lunar spacecraft under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, an effort to seed development of low-budget spacecraft that can scour the moon’s surface before the U.S. sends astronauts there around 2027.
(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Sandra Maler)
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