A robotic moon lander is set to launch into space this week, marking the second lunar mission for a company that made history a year ago by becoming the first private company to successfully land on the moon’s surface.
The spacecraft, known as Athena, was built by the Texas-based Intuitive Machines. It will carry a drill and set of instruments to study the chemical makeup of rocks and soil beneath the moon’s surface.
The mission is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which the space agency set up to support the development of moon landers by private-sector companies.
The targeted landing site is a plateau in the moon’s south polar region, on a towering, flat-topped mountain called Mons Mouton.
The lunar south pole is of particular interest to NASA because water ice is thought to be relatively abundant in the area’s permanently shadowed craters. That water could aid in the effort to eventually set up a permanent base on the moon. The Athena mission, in particular, will look for the presence of possible subsurface water, which could be a critical resource for future crewed missions to the moon.
Athena is scheduled to launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket Wednesday at 7:17 p.m. ET from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The same rocket will also launch a moon-mapping satellite developed by NASA, known as Lunar Trailblazer.
The two missions are among multiple space launches expected this week: NASA on Thursday also plans to send its SPHEREx space observatory into orbit. The satellite is designed to map the entire sky in 3D and study the origins of the universe.
Meanwhile, SpaceX aims to launch its Starship megarocket on an eighth test flight on Friday.
Then over the weekend, a separate robotic moon lander — this one built by the company Firefly Aerospace — will attempt to settle on the lunar surface.
After it launches, the Athena lander is expected to spend about a week journeying to the moon. If all goes according to plan on Wednesday, the spacecraft could touch down as early as March 6.
The mission is also designed to test a 4G communications system, developed by Nokia, on the moon’s surface. Nokia officials have said that such a network could be used to relay communications, telemetry or other data between different spacecraft on the lunar surface.
Several lunar rovers are also riding along with the Athena spacecraft, including a suitcase-sized vehicle designed to roam around the landing site and snap 3D images of the moon’s south polar terrain. Lunar Outpost, a commercial space company headquartered in Colorado, built the rover, which is named MAPP (short for Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform).
At the same time, a thumb-sized rover dubbed “AstroAnt” is meant to function as a helper bot, moving around on the roof of the MAPP rover and taking temperature readings to assess the vehicle’s health. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed the tiny robot.
In addition, during its weekslong mission, the Athena lander will release a drone designed to make a series of hops around the landing site. Dubbed Grace, the hopping robot expected to explore roughly 650 feet of ground in four hops, venturing into a nearby crater to scan for deposits of ice and the possible presence of hydrogen, according to Intuitive Machines.
The company notched its historic first moon landing in February 2024, when its Odysseus lander touched down near a crater called Malapert A, close to the lunar south pole. Not only was the milestone the first successful moon landing by a private company, it was also the first time an American spacecraft had touched down on the moon in more than 50 years — since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
However, the Odysseus lander wound up tipping over on its side on the lunar surface, hampering its ability to gather the intended quantity of data (though the landing was deemed a success nonetheless).
This time, Intuitive Machines is hoping to stick the landing.
NASA eventually plans to hire at least some of the companies participating in Commercial Lunar Payload Services program to transport cargo and scientific instruments to the lunar surface as part of the agency’s broader goal of returning astronauts to the moon.