What happened to the Athena moon lander?

A moon lander designed to hunt for the presence and quantity of lunar water ice was declared “dead” over the weekend. What went wrong?

There was a lot of hope surrounding the spacecraft and what it would find. Designed and engineered by the Houston-based company Intuitive Machines, announced on Friday that Athena was powered down just one day after arriving on the moon’s south pole.

It was expected to operate for around 10 days (a lunar day lasts around 29.5 Earth days) before shutting down as the lunar night began on the spacecraft’s landing site at Mons Mouton, a plateau located about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the south pole.

The privately owned lunar lander touched down on Thursday (6 March) after launching on 26 February atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, however flight controllers were unable to confirm its condition or whether it was even upright. It carried 10 science instruments and technology demonstrations and was funded by NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program which pays commercial spacecraft operators to encourage innovation and reduce the cost of getting robotic exploration landers on the moon. Athena had an ice drill, a drone and two rovers.

Athena’s hour-long descent out of the moon’s orbit appeared to go as planned, but it took a while for Mission Control to report its touchdown.

The vehicle was able to generate solar power and was communicating with controllers. However, just 20 minutes after landing, Tim Crain, Intuitive Machines’ chief technology officer, was still unable to confirm if everything was going as planned and in a shocking twist, NASA and Intuitive Machines abruptly ended their live landing webcast, with updates promised to follow.

Then a shocking photograph was released showing that Aethena touched down on Thursday in a crater close to the lunar south pole, but sadly tipped over on its side.

The image itself is both dramatic and stunning, but unfortunately marked the end of Athena’s mission. Due to the low sun angle and the positioning of the lander's solar panels, the spacecraft's battery depleted rapidly, causing the mission to end prematurely, company officials stated on Friday.

“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,” the company said in a statement. “The mission has concluded and teams are continuing to assess the data collected throughout the mission.”

However it’s not all bad news as Intuitive Machines pointed out that although the spacecraft didn’t operate as designed, Athena was able to briefly transmit data after touchdown. The company said this made the very short mission the “southernmost lunar landing and surface operations ever achieved”.

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