Private lunar lander touches down on the moon, but its status is unknown

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A privately owned lunar lander touched down connected the satellite Thursday, but arsenic the minutes dragged on, formation controllers could not corroborate its information oregon whether it was adjacent upright adjacent the southbound pole.

The past clip Intuitive Machines landed a spacecraft connected the moon, a twelvemonth ago, it ended up sideways.

The company's newest Athena lander dropped retired of lunar orbit arsenic planned, carrying an crystal drill, a drone and 2 rovers for NASA and others. The hourlong descent appeared to spell well, but it took a portion for Mission Control to corroborate touchdown.

“We're connected the surface,” reported ngo manager and co-founder Tim Crain. A fewer minutes later, helium repeated, "It looks similar we're down ... We are moving to measure precisely what our predisposition is connected the surface.”

Launched past week, Athena was communicating with controllers much than 230,000 miles (375,000 kilometers) distant and generating star power, officials said. But astir a half-hour aft touchdown, Crain and his squad inactive were incapable to corroborate if everything was each close with the 15-foot (4.7-meter) lander. NASA and Intuitive Machines abruptly ended their unrecorded webcast, promising much updates astatine a quality league aboriginal successful the afternoon.

“OK team, support moving the problem," Crain urged.

Intuitive Machines past twelvemonth enactment the U.S. backmost connected the satellite contempt its lander tipping connected its side. Last weekend, it was joined by different Texas company's lander.

Firefly Aerospace connected Sunday became the archetypal to execute implicit occurrence with its Blue Ghost lunar lander, connected the northeastern borderline of the adjacent broadside of the moon. A vacuum already has collected lunar ungraded for investigation and a particulate shield has shaken disconnected the abrasive particles that cling to everything.

Intuitive Machines was aiming this clip for a upland plateau conscionable 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the southbound pole, overmuch person than before.

This week's back-to-back satellite landings are portion of NASA’s commercialized lunar transportation programme meant to get the abstraction agency’s experiments to the gray, dusty aboveground and jumpstart business. The commercialized landers are besides seen arsenic scouts for the astronauts who volition travel aboriginal this decennary nether NASA's Artemis program, the successor to Apollo.

NASA officials said earlier the landing that they knew going successful that immoderate of the low-cost missions would fail. But with much backstage missions to the moon, that accrued the fig of experiments getting there.

NASA spent tens of millions of dollars connected the crystal drill and 2 different instruments riding connected Athena, and paid an further $62 cardinal for the lift. Most of the experiments were from backstage companies, including the 2 rovers. The rocket-powered drone came from Intuitive Machines — it's meant to hop into a permanently shadowed crater adjacent the landing tract successful hunt of frozen water.

Intuitive Machines' Trent Martin said earlier the formation that Athena needed to onshore upright successful bid for the drone and rovers to deploy.

To little costs adjacent more, Intuitive Machines shared its SpaceX rocket motorboat with 3 spacecraft that went their abstracted ways. Two of them — NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer and AstroForge’s asteroid-chasing Odin — are successful jeopardy.

NASA said this week that Lunar Trailblazer is spinning without vigor interaction and won’t scope its intended orbit astir the satellite for subject observations. Odin is besides silent, with its planned asteroid flyby unlikely.

As for Athena, Intuitive Machines made dozens of repairs and upgrades pursuing the company’s sideways touchdown by its archetypal lander. It inactive managed to run briefly, ending America’s moon-landing drought of much than 50 years.

Until then, the U.S. had not landed connected the satellite since Apollo 17 successful 1972. No 1 other has sent astronauts to the moon, the overriding extremity of NASA’s Artemis program. And lone 4 different countries person successfully landed robotic spacecraft connected the moon: Russia, China, India and Japan.

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