— For the second time in a little over a year, Intuitive Machines has landed a commercial spacecraft on the moon. And, for the second time, that touchdown has left the lander functioning, but at an "off-nominal" angle.

: Intuitive Machines has declared the IM-2 mission complete after landing 820 feet (250 meters) from its intended landing site in a crater. The lander, on its side, was able to complete several program and payload milestones, including NASA's PRIME-1 suite, before the its batteries were depleted. There is no expectation for the lander to be able to recharge given its orientation.

Intuitive Machines, which in February 2024 achieved the first private soft landing on the moon, seemingly repeated its success on Thursday (March 6).

"Any time that you ship a spacecraft to Florida for flight and end up a week later operating on the moon, I declare that a success," Steve Altemus, chief executive officer at Intuitive Machines, said in a post-landing press conference at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. "Now, we think that we have been very successful to this point, however, I do have to tell you that we don't believe we are in the correct attitude on the surface of the moon yet again."

"Odysseus," Intuitive Machines' first lander, approached the moon faster than had been planned, skid and broke off at least one of its legs before tilting over. More data is needed to confirm the orientation of the IM-2 Nova-C lander, named "Athena." (In Greek mythology, the goddess Athena was the muse to Odysseus.)

"I don't have all the data yet to say exactly what the attitude of the vehicle is," said Altemus. "We are collecting photos now and downlinking those, and we are going to get a picture from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera from above, from orbit, and we'll confirm that over the coming days, as we get that data down."

What is known is that Athena successfully arrived at about 12:30 p.m. EST (1830 GMT) on Mons Mouton, a highland located about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the south pole. The site is among NASA's designated targets for a future human landing under the Artemis program.

"We know we landed about five degrees from the moon's south pole on a lunar plateau called Mons Mouton. It's about the size of Delaware and about as tall as Mount McKinley. It is a very scientifically strategic location and we're hoping that we will get some exciting data," said Nicky Fox, NASA's associate administrator for the science mission directorate.

Inter Lucem et Tenebras

Athena's descent began 5:33 a.m. EST (1033 GMT), as it was still six hours from touching down and a week after it launched from Earth. A brief maneuver, called the descent orbit insertion, fired Athena's liquid methane and liquid oxygen main engine as it was on the far (or space-facing) side of the moon. The burn dropped the craft's minimum altitude from 62 miles (100 kilometers) to about 6.2 miles (10 km) near the landing site.

Relying on cameras and lasers to determine its location, attitude and approach, Athena re-lit its main engine at about 15 minutes before landing and kept it firing throughout the remainder of its approach, gimbaling and throttling as needed, in an a way similar to how the Apollo lunar module reached the surface.

At approximately 1.25 miles (2 km) from its target, the lander pitched over, such that Athena was mostly upright. Another set of sensors began feeding data to the on board computers to refine the landing to an area with the slightest slope and that was free of boulders, craters and other hazards.

About 33 feet (10 meters) above the moon, descending vertically at about 3.3 feet per second (1 meter per second), Athena used only its inertial measurement unit to gauge its acceleration and rotation (as its cameras and lasers would read lunar dust being kicked up from the engine).

At touchdown, the lander was programmed to shut off its engine, but mixed data signals from its propulsion and navigation system resulted in ground controllers commanding Athena to power down.

"The propulsion element console called out that they had pressure in the combustion chamber, and that would indicate that the vehicle was was upright. We had another conflicting measurement, that the IMU [inertial measurement unit], the 'z' direction, which is horizontal, was pointing upright. So that would say [the lander] was on its side," said Tim Crain, chief growth officer at Intuitive Machines.

"We found that if there was gas in the combustion chamber that was giving us a false read than the engine was running but at idle and we think that that was incorrect. In fact, the IMU data is the piece of data that says that were oriented somewhat on our side," said Crain.

Dig, roll and jump

The 15.5-foot-tall (4.7-m) lander was to — and depending on its orientation, may still — spend the next 10 days serving as a platform for its commercial and NASA-provided payloads, in part being the point of departure for two rovers and a small hopping robot.

As part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, the IM-2 mission landed with three NASA-provided science instruments. In addition to a laser retro-reflector array used to measure the precise distance between Earth and the moon, NASA's PRIME-1 (Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment 1) payload was flown to demonstrate drilling into the moon's surface to look for the presence of volatiles.

PRIME-1 is made up of a drill (The Regolith Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain or TRIDENT) and the Mass Spectrometer observing lunar operations, or MSolo.

Athena also has seven commercial payloads, including the "Freedom" data center, which if still functional will make Lonestar Data Holdings the first company to run a commercial service based on the lunar surface. As a physical back-up resource, Freedom was designed to provide storage and disaster recovery solutions (and in a demo, transmit Imagine Dragons' "Children of the Sky (A Starfield Song)" for its debut on Earth).

Athena will also continue testing Columbia Sportswear's OMNI-Heat Infinity and OMNI-Shade Sun Deflector technology as they protect key systems on the lander from the extremes of outer space and the moon. OMNI-Heat Infinity blankets are covering Athena's helium tanks, while OMNI-Shade Sun Deflector is being used to shield the lander's top deck.

Lunar Outpost's Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform, or MAPP, was set to be the first commercial rover to roll across another celestial body and the first U.S. robotic rover to be deployed on the moon. The four-wheeled vehicle, which has the Danish toy company Lego as one of its partners, has a small robot on its back, MIT's AstroAnt, and was expected to cache a sample of regolith to sell to NASA under a pre-arranged deal, marking the first-ever insitu sale of space resources.

Lunar Outpost's rover was also to test the moon's first cellular network, Nokia's Lunar Surface Communications System, by using it to transmit data to Athena.

Athena also landed with Yaoki, a rover built by Dymon of Japan, which was built to work in any orientation without the need for a self-righting mechanism.

In addition, the mission was to debut Intuitive Machines' Micro Nova Hopper, named "Grace" (after mathematician and computer programmer Grace Hopper). The robot was intended to propulsively make a series of jumps with the aim of descending into a permanently-shadowed crater to seek out signs of water ice.

Mounted to the hopper is Puli Space Technologies' Lunar Water Snooper, a neutron spectrometer developed in Hungary that is designed to detect ice, and a lunar radiometer from the German space agency (German Aerospace Center or DLR) to measure surface temperatures near the moon's south pole.

Lunar legacy

Athena bears U.S. and Texas flags, including an American flag silkscreened on fire-resistant Beta cloth that, like one flown on IM-1, that was intended to fly on a Apollo mission.

At the end of the lunar day, Intuitive Machines was set to conclude its second moon mission by capturing high-definition imagery of a lunar eclipse on March 14. From its viewpoint on the lunar surface, Athena might still be able to see the sun sweeping from right to left on the lunar horizon, passing behind Earth, before reappearing again.

IM-2 is the 154th attempt at a moon mission since 1958, including flybys, orbiters, impactors and landers. Athena is the 28th lunar lander to softly touch down.