Intuitive Machines IM-2/Athena Mission Summary

If the important goals of a mission include to learn what not to do the same way if it fails, Athena's mission taught a lot. This might be the last public telling of the Athena stories, and there's a lot to digest in there. 

The Athena spacecraft was not exactly flying blind as it approached the lunar surface one week ago. The software on board did a credible job of recognizing nearby craters, even with elongated shadows over the terrain. However, the lander's altimeter had failed.

So while Athena knew where it was relative to the surface of the Moon, the lander did not know how far it was above the surface.

Not knowing its altitude above the surface was a critical detail. The lander struck the surface on a plateau, toppled over, and began to skid.  It rotated a couple of times before coming to rest in a cold, dark crater.  Intuitive Machines' CEO, Steve Altemus, said, "the landing was kind of like sliding into second base."  

Expectations were high for this mission given that a year ago, IM's first lander (Odysseus) became the first private spacecraft to land on the moon.  For a couple of moments before it fell over.  

In some ways, this mission was even more disappointing. Because Athena skidded across the lunar surface, it dredged up regolith. When it came to a stop, some of this material was blown up into the solar panels—already in a sub-optimal location on its side. The spacecraft's power reserves, therefore, were limited. Almost immediately, the team at Intuitive Machines knew their spacecraft was dying.

"We knew we had slid into a slightly shadowed crater, and the temperature was very cold," Altemus said. "The solar arrays had regolith on them, and they weren't charging, the ones pointing up, enough to give us sufficient power to power the heaters to keep it warm enough to survive."

The temperature in the crater where Athena ended up was approximately minus 280° Fahrenheit (minus 173° C). With the solar arrays generating only about 100 watts of power, there was not enough energy to both power the spacecraft's heaters as well as communicate back to Earth using Athena's high-gain antenna. So instead of limping along for 50 hours, mission operators decided to operate as robustly as they could for 13 hours, and get down as much data as they could.

During those few hours - and the few before the landing - Athena was able to gather useful information.  By landing near the south pole, Athena returned valuable data and imagery to NASA about the area around Mons Mouton.  Their private customers, including Nokia and Lonestar Data Holdings, were able to get some useful information from their payloads.  

In the big picture sense, though, these are simply bright spots in an otherwise disappointing mission. 

Yet what Altemus wants people to understand—which he acknowledges is somewhat difficult to explain—is that this mission was largely a success. What can he possibly mean by that?
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"It's like losing a Final Four game or an NBA title," he said. "You lose it, and then what do you do? You don't give up. You go back in, you start training again, you start working out again, and that's what the team's doing."

Compared to Odysseus a year ago, Athena flew smoothly.  Altemus reported that during last year's mission every day started with each shift coming in to put out the fire of the day; while Athena made it all the way to within miles above the Moon without significant problems. 

In addition, the company proved out its communications technology that will be used as part of a lunar data relay network that NASA has contracted with Intuitive Machines to develop. Moreover, Athena attempted to land within a few degrees of the south pole, a challenging location due to the solar angle and uneven terrain, and made it down without crashing.

An unsettling part of this mission is that failure of Athena's altimeter; unsettling because Odysseus was also impacted by the failure of its altimeter.  

Although it was a different problem with the spacecraft's altimeter this time—it's still unclear why Athena's rangefinder failed, perhaps due to a thermal or vibration event—it is frustrating to fail for a similar reason. But all the pieces for success are there, and in the demanding environment of spaceflight, Intuitive Machines is close, Altemus said.

Athena on approach to its most important step: landing. Image credit: Intuitive Machines

Final words to CEO Steve Altemus:

"I would say it's more disappointing than really a material setback," Altemus said. "The world was watching, and we put our heart and soul into this company and this vehicle. And I look in the eyes of the team, and they had such ambitions for this mission, Athena and Gracie the hopper. I mean, it was a big leap. It might have been too big a leap on the second mission."