Athena didn’t crash. But what did happen to it?
Hours after the 15-foot-tall robotic spacecraft arrived at the moon’s surface, closer to the lunar south pole than any spacecraft has been, it remained unclear whether its touchdown was smooth enough to perform its intended work, or if it toppled over in the process, potentially limiting the mission’s scientific achievements.
“We’re trying to evaluate exactly what happened in that last bit,” Tim Crain, the chief technology officer of Intuitive Machines, said at a news conference.
The spacecraft is almost identical to Odysseus, the lander that the company sent to the moon last year. Odysseus was the first commercially operated vehicle to successfully land on the moon. But that success came with an asterisk when the vehicle toppled shortly after reaching the ground.
It appears that might have happened again.
At a post-landing news conference, Steve Altemus, the chief executive of Intuitive Machines, said the spacecraft had sent back conflicting data about whether it was standing upright or tipped over. But a sensor known as an inertial measurement unit offered a perhaps convincing clue that Athena was on its side.
As it headed to the lunar surface, laser instruments that measured the lander’s altitude were providing noisy data, which may have contributed to the botched landing.
Until that final descent, Athena had performed much more smoothly than the Odysseus lander a year ago, said Dr. Crain of Intuitive Machines. “We were expecting a fully successful landing,” he said.