Commercial Moon Landna Athena

With two commercial lunar landers already on the way, Houston-based Intuitive Machine has high hopes for its second robot, Athena, the core of a multi-element, NASA-sponsored mission-launched-on-the-waiting Wednesday to help pave the way for human expeditions and search for ICE.

Take off from PAD 39A at the Kennedy Space Center at 7:16 pm ET. Assuming there is a on-time launch and no major problems, the Athena lander is expected to drop to a flat Messal structure called Mons Mouton on March 6. The landing site is only 100 miles from the South Pole of the Moon.

Another privately built moon lander, the blue ghost of Firefly Aerospace is Launched by Falcon 9 SpaceX Rocket on January 15 and is landing on the moon earlier on Sunday. Near the Mare Crisium Center, it comes with 10 NASA-sponsored tools to collect data needed for astronaut logins planned by the agency’s Artemis program.

Blue Ghost shares the Falcon 9 with another Moon Lander, which was built by the Japanese company Ispace. It has a longer, low-energy trajectory to the moon and is expected to land in May.

What is the difference between the Athena lander

Athena Lander represents a more complex mission with broader scientific goals. Intuitive machine managers say they have made dozens of upgrades and improvements to ensure the company’s first lander, Odysseus, landing safely, upright. Tilt during touchdown Last February.

“Every time you go, it’s… a plate of paper,” said CEO Steve Altemus. “I think we have higher confidence, but this time our mission is also more complex.

“This time we are flying with a deployable drill bit. We are flying with a deployable bot, we are flying with a drone, (a) a rocket-powered drone, bounce, fly from the ground along the lander and jump out of the ground, then land on the ground and then along the permanent shadow (crater).

“All of these deployments and surface operations are new and when we do that, we will learn.”

Athena Lander’s trident drill and mass spectrometer will analyze the ultra-cold soil under the spacecraft. The lander will also deploy a small commercially built rover and a rocket-powered hopper that will jump to 300 feet high and then converge to nearby, permanently shadowed craters looking for ice deposits.

If ice can be extracted, ice will be a key resource for future astronauts as it can be turned into drinking water, air and even rocket fuel, providing in-situ resources that otherwise have to be carried from the earth.

Data collected through orbital satellites suggest that there may be reservoirs of ice in the cold refrigerators, the cold and dark interiors of these icebergs never see the sun’s light. Athena’s mission is the first to really look for suspicious ice from the surface.

Hopper, named after software pioneer Grace Grace Hopper, and Rover, a mobile autonomous exploration platform built by a company called Lunar Outpost, will communicate with Athena Lander through cellular networking devices Nokia offers in the first challenge.

Other spacecraft markers

A small mini repair (Yaoki) provided by Dymon Co., Tokyo will drop from the Athena Lander to the surface. It will provide close-up images of the lunar soil or Regolith and bring it back to the opposite side through Athena.

If all isn’t enough, the Falcon 9 ride is three other independent spacecraft, one provided by NASA and provided by a private company.

Shortly after launch, NASA’s Lunar Trail Blazers will release on their own trajectory to orbit around the moon’s pole. During the two-year mission, both tools will study the properties of any ice that may be present in the following soils while measuring surface temperatures worldwide.

The second traveler is a commercially built probe called Odin built by Astroforge, which is heading to deep space for asteroid exploration missions. This will be the first commercially built probe to transcend the moon’s flight, heading to asteroid pilots for potentially valuable mineral deposits.

Epic Aerospace offers a third satellite called Chimera Geo. It is a compact space tug that moves small satellites to different locations in space.

Grace Hopper could be a star in the show. Five hops were planned, and the first time they were loaded at about 65 feet of height, another 65 feet from Athena.

“In the second jump, we expect to be about 50 meters (164 feet) in height. In the third jump, we will be about 100 meters (328 feet) in height.”

The fourth jump brought grace from the lander into about 1,500 permanently shaded craters. It is the fifth and final hop of the Nokia network command, or triggered by a backup timer, which will bring Gracey back to the crater.

“The purpose of the demonstration is to show that we can reach extreme environments using technology other than the Wanderer,” Martin said. “The idea is, if you have a very deep crater and want to get into that crater, why not use a drone?”

Cost of the task

NASA paid $62 million to the intuitive machine to deliver the Trident’s drill bit and mass spectrometer (collectively known as Prime-1) to the moon. NASA’s “breakthrough point” technology development program paid $15 million to help Nokia’s cellular communications integration, and another $41 million helped fund intuitive Grace Hopper.

Ultimately, NASA spent another $89 million on Lunar Trail Blazer satellite and mission operations. NASA’s total cost: $207 million.

The mission is largely funded by the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.

The CLPS program is designed to encourage private companies to launch payloads to the moon to collect the required scientific and engineering data, and then Artemis astronauts begin working on the ground near Lunar South Pole later this year.

“NASA is investing in commercial delivery services to the moon to achieve industry growth and support long-term lunar exploration, helping the United States stay ahead of space innovation,” said Nicola Fox, head of NASA’s Space Science Mission Agency.

Athena is Lunar Lander, the second CLPS sponsored by Intuitive Machines. The company’s first landers, Odysseus, landed on the moon on February 22, 2024. However, the spacecraft fell faster than expected and moved slightly to one side during a touchdown. Apparently, it grabbed a foot pad on the surface and tilted it on the sides.

However, the spacecraft still has power and sent the data for several days. This time, several upgrades were made to ensure the safe landing of Athena.

“If you can land on the moon regularly, then all smart people, scientists and engineers who want to fly things to the moon will now be willing to invest in building and designing systems that will help us live and work on the moon,” Altemus said.

“These are the initial highways or trails that open up a whole new lunar exploration area. Just like when the United States was a little bit too young, heading west, right? That’s that. That’s it.”