With NASA again picking up the bill, Intuitive Machines of Houston is going back to the moon.
On Thursday, the company will attempt to land a 15-foot-tall robotic spacecraft, which it built, on the lunar surface. The spacecraft, named Athena, is almost identical to Odysseus, the lander that Intuitive Machines 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.
This time, the hope is that Athena will stay upright as it deploys payloads for NASA and commercial customers.
Here’s what else you need to know about Athena’s moon landing attempt:
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Athena’s descent toward the lunar surface will soon begin, and plans call for it to set down at 12:32 p.m. Eastern time. NASA will begin streaming live coverage at 11:30 a.m. on its website, or you can watch it in our forthcoming video player.
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The lander’s destination is Mons Mouton, a flat-topped mountain about 100 miles from the moon’s south pole. That will be closer to the moon’s south pole than any previous spacecraft has landed.
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Intuitive Machines is the second company to attempt a moon landing this week. Firefly Aerospace, another Texas space company, successfully reached the Mare Crisium region of the moon on Sunday morning.
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The main customer of both missions is NASA under its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which hires private companies to take NASA-financed science and technology payloads to the lunar surface.
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The main payload on Athena is a drill for NASA that will extract lunar soil to be sniffed by a mass spectrometer for frozen water and other compounds.
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The spacecraft is carrying much more than a drill. Also aboard is a rover the size of a small dog that will test a Nokia cellphone network on the moon, and two smaller rovers, one built by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the other by a Japanese company. Intuitive Machines will also test a rocket-powered vehicle called a hopper that could explore places not easily reached by rovers.
