by The second moonlander made by intuitive machines has touched the moon, but just like the first spacecraft of the private spacious company, it may not be upright. Yesterday, the Athena vehicle for intuitive machines IM-2 mission landed just 100 miles from the moon of the moon, but there is uncertainty about the orientation that can influence the duration of the mission.
“We do not believe that we are again in the right position in relation to the surface of the moon,” said Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus during the post-landing news conference. “We get a photo of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbital camera from above and we will confirm that in the coming days.”
The Athena Lander counts on the surface according to Altemus and communicates with the Mission Ground Network team on earth, but performance is suboptimal, which can reduce the ten-day lifespan of Athena. “We have taken a few steps for maintaining power conservation as sensible measures to see how long and what goals we can achieve in the mission in the future,” said Altemus. “It will be off-nominal, because we don’t get everything we had asked for in terms of power generation, communication.”
Once the orientation of the lander is confirmed, the IM-2 team can then determine how many of Athena’s Payloads and scientific instruments are fully operational-including an exercise that is designed to search for ice cream, and a jumping drone vehicle called Grace that is intended to first explore a permanently shadow crater.
