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Mar 07, 2025

Live updates: Intuitive machines Athena lander reaches the moon, but its status is unclear | CNN

We’ve wrapped up our live coverage for the day. Read more about Intuitive Machines second moon landing attempt here, or scroll through the posts below to relive the event as it unfolded. The Athena

We’ve wrapped up our live coverage for the day. Read more about Intuitive Machines second moon landing attempt here, or scroll through the posts below to relive the event as it unfolded.

The Athena lander is on the lunar surface, but its exact orientation is unknown, meaning the mission team is unclear about how it’s sitting.

This means that the mission will now be what Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus referred to as “off-nominal” — the aerospace term for not-as-expected — suggesting that the objectives for IM-2 will need to be met differently than originally planned.

However, it does appear the lander touched down somewhere in the vicinity of the landing site because its crater-mapping algorithm performed as expected.

Until Athena’s cameras, as well as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, can return images, the lander’s orientation and its exact location in relation to the target landing perimeter remains unknown. The orbiter will likely be able to return images within the next couple of days.

The team also needs to determine exactly how off-nominal the mission will be. This could impact the mission’s duration, as well as which payloads and experiments, like rovers, aboard the lander can move forward and complete their test objectives.

Tucked inside Athena, onboard the MAPP rover constructed by Colorado-based Lunar Outpost, is a key — or a series of random numbers — that can unlock a wallet that is currently holding $251,169.29 worth of cryptocurrency.

They funds were largely donated, according to Lunar Outpost CEO Justin Cyrus, and included holdings in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other coins. The project was put together by Lunar Outpost and Silicon Valley-based firm Nakamoto.

The numeric key was laser engraved on the MAPP rover and “no one knows what (the numbers) are,” Cyrus said.

Lunar Outpost intended to drive MAPP until it ceased operations as lunar night fell over the area, making the rover an indefinite feature of the lunar surface.

But Nakamoto and Lunar Outpost hoped the crypto key would lure future astronauts or explorers to the site, serving as a cosmic treasure hunt.

“It’s just kind of a fun way to bring attention to the new economy out in space and what is possible,” Cyrus added.

It’s not yet clear, however, if the MAPP rover will be able to leave the Athena lander at all. Cyrus said earlier this week that Lunar Outpost might be able to deploy the vehicle even if Athena isn’t sitting upright.

The Athena lander’s cameras, which were added after lessons learned from the first Intuitive Machines lunar mission, IM-1, will help the team determine the lander’s orientation, Intuitive Machines chief technology officer Tim Crain said.

“We have a number of cameras to choose from to help us visualize the horizon,” he said. “We can get a lot of information, really the way humanity has done it for millennia, by looking at the distant horizon, seeing the Earth in the field of view. With that information, we’ll be able to confirm orientation.”

Prior to landing, Athena’s cameras captured “some really, really great pictures flying over the south pole,” Intuitive Machines chief technology officer Tim Crain said.

“Even as a space person, you know, I, like everyone else, I’m used to looking at the moon and seeing the bright part and the really dark part,” Crain said. “The south pole is different. It’s this twilight space of shadows and grays. That was interesting. I’m really proud of how well our crater tracking system did in this very unusual lighting condition. So, we’ll get it next time.”

Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace, which have both landed on the moon within the span of a week, have a friendly rivalry — one that involves sending each other coffee, cookies and offering some help in crucial moments.

“Once we got into orbit, Firefly had already landed, and we were getting a signal interference on one of our radios, and we knew that one of our frequencies was close to theirs, so we called Firefly,” Intuitive Machines chief technology officer Tim Crain said.

The Firefly team was happy to help, he said. The team later figured out the radio interference wasn’t an issue. But it appreciated the help all the same, as well as the shared “sense of community,” Crain said.

“Any time humanity puts a lander on the moon, it’s a good thing, and so they definitely live up to that,” Crain said. “They will help us out. Happy to help them out in the future, too.”

Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus said the team believes the Athena lander is “in the vicinity of the intended landing site.”

“I don’t know exactly where we would be in relation to the landing ellipse that we had specified pre-mission, with 50 meters accuracy, so that is what we want to get Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera view to pinpoint the location,” Altemus said.

The orbiter should be able to capture an image of the lander within a couple of days.

Intuitive Machines chief technology officer Tim Crain said he believes Athena’s crater recognition software worked as expected and put the lander on the proper trajectory to land near its target.

Athena’s software includes a map of craters within the area. The algorithm identifies circles — in the case of Athena, 280 circles, and determines which ones are craters. It then matches them, like fingerprints, to the craters in its map database.

The autonomous software, including the lander’s onboard navigation system, confirmed it was identifying the correct craters, Crain said.

“The answer, over and over and over, was, yes,” Crain said.

But Crain is “a little bit disappointed” because he said the lander is likely just outside of the landing site perimeter.

However, Athena is “absolutely on” the 60-mile-wide (100-kilometer-wide) plateau called Mons Mouton — which lies about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the lunar south pole, Crain said.

Dr. Nicky Fox, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, addressed the difficulty of landing on the moon during the news conference.

“I think we can all agree, particularly today, that landing on the moon is extremely hard and Intuitive Machines-2 was aiming to land in a place that humanity has not been to before,” Fox said.

Fox and Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus both said that the Athena lander’s exact location on the moon is unknown.

“As Steve said, we don’t know the exact location of the lander,” Fox said. “We do know that it is returning data, and we look forward to actually being able to work with Intuitive Machines on a plan to return as much science data and technology data as we can during its stay on the moon.”

Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus confirmed that while the Athena lander is on the lunar surface, the landing didn’t go entirely as planned.

“I do have to tell you that we don’t believe we’re in the correct attitude on the surface of the moon yet,” Altemus said during a news conference hosted by the company and NASA. “Again, I don’t have all the data yet to say exactly where what the attitude of the vehicle is. We’re collecting photos now and downlinking those, and we’re 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.”

Altemus confirmed that the lander is charging on the surface, and the team has been able to communicate back and forth with Athena.

“We can command payloads on and off,” he said. “We have done some power conservation steps as prudent measures to see how long and what objectives we can accomplish in the mission going forward.”

Altemus said the team will work closely with NASA to identify science objectives that are the highest priority.

“Then we’ll figure out what the what the mission profile will look like,” he said. “It will be off-nominal, because we’re not getting everything that we had asked for in terms of power generation, communications.”

But Altemus also said he believes Athena has achieved success by landing.

“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,” he said.

The status of the Athena spacecraft which reached the lunar surface Thursday afternoon is currently unclear. It’s the second US-made spacecraft to attempt a moon landing this week.

Athena, made by Intuitive Machines, traveled 700,000 kilometers (435,000 miles), which is nearly double the distance between the Earth and moon, according to Intuitive Machines’ Josh Marshall.

Where it was landing: The lander’s destination was Mons Mouton — a plateau in the moon’s south pole region. The towering geographic feature has pristine conditions for this mission, as it offers a “Goldilocks zone for sunlight,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. The sunlight and clear view of Earth at the location are important to power the mission and maintain communication between the spacecraft and mission control, Fox said.

Here’s a recap of what happened:

The mission of Odin, a spacecraft belonging to asteroid mining company AstroForge that rode with Athena to space before breaking off on its own, has met an untimely end, the company shared Thursday.

Odin was attempting to voyage to an asteroid in the hopes that onboard cameras could confirm whether the space rock is filled with platinum, a valuable resource that AstroForge hopes to one day collect and bring back home. Now, the company believes that the spacecraft is tumbling and its chance of regaining communication with Odin is minimal, AstroForge announced this morning in a post on X.

The goal was for the spacecraft to spend roughly 300 days in the celestial void, waiting to make a flyby approach of an asteroid called 2022 OB5.

AstroForge CEO Matt Gialich knew such a mission would be extremely risky and complicated.

“I’m f**king terrified,” Gialich told CNN in a video interview last month. “That’s the honest truth.”

So far, only government space agencies have brought minuscule samples from asteroids back to Earth at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. Odin cost less than $7 million and was assembled in just 10 months.

The vehicle encountered issues from its first few hours in space. An update on the company’s website reads like a science fiction novel, recounting one dramatic turn of events after another.

Despite initial complications, the company said it made contact with Odin multiple times, but ultimately lost track of the spacecraft and could not make further contact due to high position error.

“These learnings from Odin will significantly de-risk our upcoming missions and increase our chances of success,” said the company’s chief operating officer Robyn Ringuette, in a statement. “While we didn’t achieve everything we hoped for with Odin, the mission has already provided an invaluable return on investment through the knowledge gained.”

Read more about Odin here.

Countries and companies worldwide are racing to the surface of the moon — for several critical reasons.

So far, the United States, China, India and Japan are the only nations to have soft-landed vehicles on the moon in the 21st century. But there are more than 100 lunar missions planned to take place before 2030, according to the European Space Agency.

Here’s why:

Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace are in the throes of a friendly rivalry as the two Texas-based companies each pursue separate moon landing missions in one calendar week.

Firefly’s Sunday landing was deemed successful, while the fate of Intuitive Machines’ Athena lander is unclear.

Still, while the two companies have played with lighthearted jabs, they have expressed support for each other.

An Intuitive Machines spokesperson told CNN that the company had Austin-based Rocket Coffee ATX send over some caffeinated beverages to fuel Firefly’s landing-day festivities, which happened in the wee hours of Sunday.

Firefly, meanwhile, sent cookies to Intuitive Machines’ mission control this week, the spokesperson said.

A party teeming with hundreds of Intuitive Machines employees, business partners and NASA personnnel is clearing out. The event was hosted at the Lone Star Flight Museum in Houston.

The next big update is expected to come at 4 p.m. ET when NASA and Intuitive Machines leadership discuss the mission during a news conference.

We’re still waiting for clear confirmation about how and where Athena landed on the moon.

If the vehicle tipped over on its side, as Intuitive Machines’ first lunar spacecraft did last year, it can still carry out some critical science and tech demonstrations if the company can reconfigure communications to get enough data.

The CEO of Lunar Outpost, which built a carry-on suitcase-size rover designed to deploy from Athena, told CNN that the company would attempt to deploy the four-wheeled rover even if Athena is tipped over.

“If it’s on its side again — which again, hopefully doesn’t happen — we can deploy if it’s on its side, kind of leaning down,” Lunar Outpost CEO Justin Cyrus told CNN. “We (can) try to drive off and just see what happens again.”

Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus just arrived at an employee watch party at the Lone Star Flight Museum in Houston, where hundreds of people have been gathered, snacking on barbecue as they wait for news.

“We’re looking at things now to determine exactly where we stand,” Altemus said. “What we have at Intuitive Machines is a steely eyed rocket scientist and mission control team.”

Altemus said Athena used avoidance maneuvers to navigate, avoiding “boulders bigger than a bowling ball.” He also confirmed the vehicle is intact, delivering data, generating power — but not enough, hence Intuitive Machines’ efforts to shut down certain components to save energy.

A lot of questions remain.

“The main priority right now is to get a picture of our orientation and location on the surface so that we know precisely how to move forward with the mission,” Altemus said. “Where is the vehicle? What’s it look like? Where can we point the antennas? What can we do with the radios? What can we do with the science panels? I don’t know yet.”

One factor keeping today’s moon landing attempt interesting: Intuitive Machines is a publicly traded company, and investors are reacting in real time as news comes down.

Right now, the stock is down about 18.5%, trading at $11.50 per share.

The company’s stock was also down very slightly this morning — in line with the broader stock market as Wall Street reacts to tariffs and other economic factors. But Intuitive Machines’ shares have been on a roller coaster since the landing attempt.

A cheap spacecraft, developed by California-based startup AstroForge, rode alongside Athena when it launched from Earth last week.

The two vehicles were each on their own trajectory as Athena aimed for the moon and AstroForge’s Odin seeks to fly by an asteroid called 2022 OB5. (It’s not clear if that will happen, as Odin is already experiencing difficulties.)

The AstroForge spacecraft was designed to snap photos of the asteroid rather than landing on its surface, intending to pave the way for future missions that could extract valuable metal from the space rock.

But for the record: Landing on an asteroid is easier than landing on the moon, said Siegfried Eggl, an assistant professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“It sounds crazy, but some of the asteroids come really close to the Earth, and you don’t have to descend into something that is mountainous and has valleys (and where) gravity is much weaker.”

Siegfried Eggl, assistant professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Illinois.

So, soft landing on the moon “is much harder than soft-landing on asteroids,” Eggl said.

Company cofounder Kam Ghaffarian just offered an update from the podium at an employee watch party: “We have landed, we have indication they have power, and we’re trying to figure out the rest of it.”

At last, this elicited some cheers and applause from a crowd that has remained largely quiet as employees wait to hear updates.

Jade Marcantel, the chief human capital officer at Intuitive Machines, just kicked off the employee watch party, addressed a crowd of employees gathered here and told them to take a break to eat some BBQ.

There have been no raucous celebrations, setting a tone far different from the watch party that Firefly Aerospace held near Austin for its lunar landing on Sunday.

There is no clear indiction that something is deeply wrong with, Athena, however. Employees are still waiting to see photos of touchdown and to hear exactly how and where the vehicle landed.

“Athena is on the surface of the moon,” said Intuitive Machines’ Josh Marshall. “We are communicating with the vehicle.”

What we don’t know is how the vehicle landed and whether it is upright or tipped on its side.

Employees gathered at a watch party have not offered any dramatic reactions. Some applause rang out as the livestream ended, but there have been no cheerful hugs or screams.

Commentators on Intuitive Machines’ webcast confirmed that Athena is getting power, suggesting its solar panels may be catching sunlight.

Moments ago, the company said it was working to conserve Athena’s power “to keep the vehicle in good health.”

Employees at a watch party in Houston have not offered celebrations, though at least some data is coming down from the Athena lander.

It was not clear heading into today’s landing attempt how soon the vehicle was expected to confirm its safety. Earlier in the webcast, one mission controller noted they did not have Quasonix, or telemetry from Athena.

“We are generating power,” however, said Intuitive Machines’ Tim Crain. “We (can) communicate through our control, radio, and we are working to evaluate exactly what our orientation is on the surface.”

The company is currently going through the process of trying to put Athena’s engine in safe mode.

“We talked about the priorities after touchdown and being safe was first followed by pulling down some health status information, and then images,” Marshall said.

“It’s just about nine minutes after the expected landing. So let’s hang tight and continue to watch this problem, challenges unfold inside of Mission Control,” he added.

“One good radio sending down data, one that has lost his signal,” said Intuitive Machines Josh Marshall.

Employees have not offered any celebrations at a Houston watch party.

Chief technology officer Tim Crain said that the vehicle is also sensing the motion of the moon.

“We’re on the surface. Let’s evaluate,” he said.

Athena’s touchdown time has come and gone, but engineers are still searching for a signal and waiting for confirmation.

A Houston watch party, busting with hundreds of people, is so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

Mere minutes before touchdown, Athena will fire up its engine to pitch over into an upright position, rolling out of the horizontal orientation it has been flying in.

When that happens, special navigation sensors on the vehicle’s exterior will begin scouring the lunar surface, seeking to lock in on a safe landing site free of craters, rocks and steep slopes.

Onboard software will automatically scout such a location and begin steering the spacecraft toward landing. As Athena continues lowering its altitude, it will enter “terminal descent” — a period of time during which a plume of lunar dust will prevent the vehicle’s lasers and rangefinders from helping the spacecraft navigate.

The lander will instead begin using only “inertial measurements,” which means it will rely on tools that can determine its speed, altitude and orientation without actually using the lunar surface as a reference point.

It’s like a dead reckoning — a navigation method that mariners rely on when dense fog makes it impossible to navigate using the stars or nearby landmarks.

Akin to a sailor using a compass, Athena will rely on high-tech motion detectors.

In Intuitive Machines’s words, “Terminal descent is like walking towards a door and closing your eyes the last three feet. You know you’re close enough, but your inner ear must lead you through the door.”

Athena should have completed a “pitch over” maneuver to orient itself upright, changing its orientation so that its main engine points down at the lunar surface.

The move may cause a communications blackout, Intuitive Machines’ Josh Marshall said earlier in the webcast.

Intuitive Machines’ Josh Marshall just confirmed the Athena lander is delivering healthy telemetry.

“Good signal, good data,” he confirmed

Right now, Athena is “completely autonomous,” said Intuitive Machines’ Josh Marshall.

“Flight controllers do have a few options to manually intervene, to talk about allowing a little bit of extra time” — possibly altering the vehicle’s trajectory if additional analysis is needed to prepare Athena for a safe touchdown.

The spacecraft just fired up its engine, beginning a gradual slowdown that will continue until touchdown.

Intuitive Machines’ Josh Marshall said that the simulation being displayed on the company’s webcast does offer live updates. But it will be Tim Crain, the comapny’s chief technology officer and mission director, who will make the final confirmation of touchdown.

“The ultimate call of confirmation of what is happening is going to come from that mission director seat,” Marshall said.

An extremely common adage in the space industry is, “Space is hard.” Engineers and industry leadership frequently toss the phrase around when discussing the challenges faced by spaceborne missions.

Athena is among a fleet of robotic lunar landers that NASA is sponsoring, and the agency’s acting chief, Janet Petro, spoke to how “unique” each vehicle is.

“We just develop differently (to address) the harshness of the environment with no atmosphere, the dust that’s going to spring up when it lands. These conditions make it really, really hard to do it right and get it right.”

Petro added that Firefly, another Texas-based company that landed a vehicle on the moon Sunday, had other companies send them coffee and doughnuts “because they know how stressful it is for the team as they’re coming for a landing.”

Among the array of science instruments and tech demos onboard Athena is a square, 30-inch (76.2-centimeter) drone — or hopper — called Grace, or “Gracie,” as Intuitive Machines employees affectionately refer to the vehicle.

The spacecraft is designed to conduct a series of brief flights, potentially traveling more than a mile (2 kilometers) from Athena’s landing site.

Gracie will aim to dive inside a lunar crater, where shadows create some of the coldest known temperatures in our solar system. Some places can reach -414 degrees Fahrenheit (-248 Celsius), according to NASA.

These frigid craters are believed to be home to vast stores of water ice, and Gracie will be equipped with a “snooper” — or special sensor — that will aim to confirm the presence of water ice.

If successful, Gracie’s journey would mark the first time a shadowed lunar crater has ever been explored.

Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus told CNN in February that the company got the idea for the Gracie hopper as engineers were looking at a suite of navigation equipment for the Athena lander.

“We said, ‘Wow, if we could use (the navigation sensors), put a propulsion system and batteries and a flight computer on it, we could actually fly that off the side of the lander,’” Altemus said. “We drew it up (and) we wrote a proposal to NASA.”

The offer worked: NASA thought the idea was clever, Altemus said, and in 2021 awarded Intuitive Machines $41.6 million to get the job done.

Though the moon lies about 384,400 kilometers (238,855 miles) from Earth — Athena has had to put on some extra mileage as it has completed laps around the moon.

The vehicle has ventured about 700,000 kilometers (435,000 miles), which is nearly double the distance between the Earth and moon, according to Intuitive Machines’ Josh Marshall.

Intuitive Machines employees gathered at a company watch party in Houston are enjoying some brewskis from Texas-based company Starbase Brewing.

The company is not affiliated with SpaceX, which calls its South Texas facilities Starbase.

But Starbase Brewing is heavily inspired by the Elon Musk venture.

“Our goals are to brew delicious beer, promote science and sustainability, and develop new brewing technologies optimized for humanity’s future in space,” the company states on its website. “Established on Earth. Brewed for Mars.”

The lander’s destination is Mons Mouton — a plateau in the moon’s south pole region.

The towering geographic feature has pristine conditions for this mission, as it offers a “Goldilocks zone for sunlight,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, during a February 7 briefing about IM-2’s science objectives.

Though many areas of the south pole region are permanently in shadow — where water ice may remain perpetually frozen — Mons Mouton offers enough sunlight to “power a roughly 10-day mission while maintaining a clear view to Earth” to allow communication with the spacecraft, Fox said.

A safe touchdown will make history, as Mons Mouton is just 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the lunar south pole — closer than any human or spacecraft has ever ventured.

The plateau “is named after the mathematician Melba Mouton, one of the first ‘human computers’ who played a key role in the early field of spacecraft trajectory and geodynamics,” according to Intuitive Machines.

The company’s first lunar lander, Odysseus, also touched down in the south pole region during its historic mission last year. Its landing site, and its current resting place, is a crater called Malapert A that lies less than 100 miles (160 kilometers) from Mons Mouton.

Ben Bussey, Intuitive Machines’ chief scientist, said when mission teams pick a landing site, there are “really three parts” to the process.

The first — most important — element, Bussey said is finding a safe, flat landing site free of rocks, slopes and boulders.

The second key consideration is how the lander’s destination will affect the science and tech instruments on board. “Can we achieve the science and the technology goals that they want to do?” Bussey said.

Finally, a critical consideration is how easily data can be transmitted after touchdown. So the lander needs to be in a place where it can point antennas toward home — and it needs to be bathed in sunlight to feed the lander’s solar panels.

“You play a game of auto mechanics in that you need the sun and the Earth both to be up (or visible in the lunar sky) at the same time,” Bussey said.

NASA’s Joel Kearns, a top figure in the space agency program underpinning Athena’s flight, said during the webcast he is “over the moon” to be watching another lunar landing attempt.

He also highlighted that, while Intuitive Machines’ first mission also marked a critical pathfinder mission that landed near the lunar south pole “this mission is really different.”

“It’s not just Intuitive Machines’ second flying lunar lander, but this mission is focused exclusively on technology instead of scientific (pursuits),” Kearns said.

The technologies will be used “by scientists, by people that develop exploration systems and by people that do operations space,” he added.

Among the instruments on board are a hopping spacecraft, multiple rovers and a drill that will dig into the moon’s surface to hunt for water.

Athena’s landing site near the lunar south pole is “an extremely cold environment that we believe contains volatiles — which are chemical substances that can easily change from a liquid, to a solid, to a gas,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “These volatiles may contain trapped water ice.”

But safely arriving at this destination will be a challenge. The areas closest to the moon’s south pole are pockmarked with impact craters, making it difficult to find a patch of flat, even terrain that’s safe for landing.

“IM-2 has to be a lot more accurate than IM-1,” said Intuitive Machines’ navigation lead, Mike Hansen, during a company podcast interview last year. “So, (with Odie) IM-1 we could get away with about a kilometer (3,300-foot) footprint. IM-2 (Athena) is down to 50 meters (164 feet).”

Athena is packed to the brim with instruments and tech demonstrations. And there are even more vehicles — set to break away from the lander and explore the moon’s surface on their own — tucked inside.

Those vehicles notably include three rovers.

• The Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform, or MAPP, which was developed by Colorado-based company Lunar Outpost, will kick things off by rolling off the Athena lander six hours after touchdown. MAPP is roughly the size of a carry-on suitcase.

• Another, tiny rover will operate on top of MAPP. Dubbed AstroAnt, the matchbook-size robot has magnetic wheels that will allow it to move around and collect temperature readings for the MAPP rover, evaluating whether its thermal systems are functioning correctly.

• Finally, after Athena has been operating about five days, it will deploy Yaoki, a two-wheeled vehicle developed by Japan-based Dymon Co. According to the company, Yaoki, which weighs about 2.2 pounds (1 kilogram), is small enough to fit in the palm of your hand and cost Dymon about $1 million to send to the moon.

Intuitive Machines communications director Josh Marshall and NASA spokesperson Leah Cheshier are cohosting today’s webcast.

If successful, Athena is expected to dispatch photos about two hours after landing, which is slated for around 12:31 a.m. ET.

Vanessa Wyche, NASA’s acting associate administrator, said in remarks to Intuitive Machines employees that missions such as today’s moon landing are about more than lunar exploration. The goal is to eventually get to Mars.

NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program (CLPS), under which Athena is flying, “is also a part of the moon-to-Mars exploration approach at NASA,” she said., “We will be learning and working on the moon and learning what we apply towards going to Mars and going to the moon again (with) humans.”

The space agency has long said that its Artemis and CLPS moon programs are designed to lay groundwork, allowing scientists and engineers to develop a better understanding of how astronauts may live and work in deep space in the hopes of eventually making a much more perilous crewed mission to Mars.

But Mars is the focus of buzz in the space industry right now as well, as SpaceX CEO Elon Musk — now a top adviser to President Donald Trump — and the President have repeatedly expressed vocal support for Mars missions, highlighting the red planet over the moon.

Trump mentioned Mars again in his Tuesday speech to a joint session of Congress: “We are going to conquer the vast frontiers of science, and we’re going to lead humanity into space and plant the American flag on the planet Mars and even far beyond.”

All lunar landing attempts — even missions such as this with no humans on board — bring with them an element of risk and awe.

Success is not guaranteed. Overall, more than half of all lunar landing attempts have ended in failure — tough odds for a feat humanity first pulled off nearly 60 years ago.

While technology has advanced in the past five decades, the fundamental challenges of landing on the moon remain the same. Here’s what Athena has had to overcome — and what it has yet to face.

This will mark Intuitive Machines’ second moon landing attempt. The first last year did not go perfectly, as the IM-1 spacecraft landed tipped over on its side, leading to a shorter-than-expected mission.

Texas-based Firefly jabbed the company briefly on its webcast after Firefly’s Blue Ghost made an upright touchdown on the lunar surface Sunday, calling its landing the first fully successful touchdown of a commercial vehicle. The remark did not go unnoticed.

“It’s pretty special to do it a second time,” Intuitive Machines’ Brad Morrison joked to employees gathered at an event in Houston. “As you guys know, Firefly Aerospace — no jeers in the room please — they successfully landed. Albeit, where (Intuitive Machines is) going is a little more difficult, and this is your second opportunity to land.”

He added on a more serious note: “The commercial space business on the moon is open, and we’ve got two Texas companies that are going to claim our state. So that’s pretty exciting.”

Jade Marcantel, the chief human capital officer at Intuitive Machines, just kicked off the employee watch party.

“It is my honor to serve this incredible history-making workforce every single day. So excited to be here with you again. Welcome to Intuitive Machines. IM-2 landing party because we’re about to do this — again.”

Jade Marcantel, chief human capital officer at Intuitive Machines

Two separate lunar landers built by two Texas-based companies are set to operate on the moon at the same time.

Firefly, which is based in the Austin suburb of Cedar Park, landed its Blue Ghost vehicle on the moon Sunday within Mare Crisium — or “Sea of Crises” in Latin — which is a sprawling lunar basin near the moon’s equator.

Athena, meanwhile, is headed for Mons Mouton — a plateau that lies about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the lunar south pole.

The two locations are roughly 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) apart.

Before Intuitive Machines made history last year when its first lander, Odysseus — or “Odie,” as the startup’s employees called it — made a soft touchdown on the moon, only a handful of government space programs had pulled off that feat.

The United States, China, India, Japan and the former Soviet Union were in that exclusive club.

But Odie’s trip wasn’t perfect. Before landing, mission teams found that a laser “rangefinder” designed to help navigate the lunar terrain was not correctly hardwired.

That misstep forced the company to rely on an experimental NASA payload, which happened to be on board, for navigational support.

Ultimately, Odie tripped onto its side, leaving valuable communications antennae and solar panels pointed in inopportune directions. As a result, the lander powered down days earlier than planned.

Houston-based Intuitive Machines appears to have a friendly rivalry with Firefly Aerospace — which is headquartered a three-hour drive from Houston in the Austin suburb of Cedar Park.

Firefly landed its Blue Ghost spacecraft on the moon Sunday morning, and the company briefly alluded to Odie’s wayward orientation during live coverage of the event. Firefly declared that its Blue Ghost lander was the “first fully successful” commercial vehicle to touch down on the lunar surface.

Still, the companies have expressed support for each other.

“I’ll tell you something that is more exciting now than any other time in history is how many missions are flying to the moon. Two Texas companies flying landers to the moon that theoretically will be on the surface at the same time operating different missions on the moon — that’s just incredible for the United States.”

Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus

CNN is reporting from the Lone Star Flight Museum in Houston, which lies just down the road from Intuitive Machines’s headquarters, and the company is hosting a watch party beneath the wings of full-size aircraft on display here.

The event is expected to be jam-packed, with employees and VIPs from NASA, many of whom are sporting cowboy hats.

The event is much larger than the party Intuitive Machines put on last year for its Odysseus moon landing mission. The company has now grown from 250 employees to about 450.

Athena is an ancient Greek goddess who represents wisdom, warfare and justice and is the protector of the city of Athens.

Often depicted as a warrior, Athena plays a critical role in legend as a divine mentor to Odysseus — for whom Intuitive Machines’ first mission was named — during his long journey home from the Trojan War in Homer’s epic poem, “Odyssey.”

“Much like the figure from Greek mythology, Athena embodies qualities of wisdom and strategic thinking, pushing Intuitive Machines engineers to excel in their daily technical efforts as they explore the lunar surface.”

Intuitive Machines

Houston-based Intuitive Machines may be a private-sector company, but the organization has deep roots in public service.

The company’s headquarters lie just across the street from NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston — which, until 2013, is where Intuitive Machines CEO and cofounder Steve Altemus worked.

In fact, he was the deputy director of JSC.

Altemus had also been part of a NASA think tank called Blue Sky, which consisted of a “handful” of people charged with imaging a path forward for the space agency’s human exploration efforts, he said in an Intuitive Machines podcast series.

“That was the basis of the company (Intuitive Machines) — was a think tank,” Altemus said.

Altemus said he had serious hesitations about leaving the space agency and the prospect of starting his own company. In fact, he had interviewed to be the president at a nuclear energy company, called X-energy — but instead, he walked away with a handshake deal for $10 million to pursue his own business aimed at solving some of the world’s most interesting engineering problems.

Crucially Tim Crain, a former lead engineer at JSC, left the space agency with Altemus and became the company’s cofounder and chief technology officer.

“I think that spirit of the company — when we were that young and fresh and new — is still here. It’s still here as the basis of the business now, with 400 people.”

Steve Altemus, Intuitive Machines CEO

CLPS — pronounced “clips” — stands for Commercial Lunar Payload Services. It’s a NASA initiative under which Athena is one of several robotic landers vying to carry out key scientific research on the moon.

The Blue Ghost spacecraft from Texas-based company Firefly Aerospace, which landed on the moon Sunday, is also a CLPS project.

Firefly and Intuitive Machines were paid $101 million and $62.5 million, respectively, for their Blue Ghost and Athena missions.

CLPS is part of NASA’s Artemis Program, which aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface for the first time in more than 50 years by mid-2027, according to the latest NASA timeline.

The goal for the CLPS initiative is to gather troves of data and test out crucial technology before humans return later this decade. NASA is using these landers for scouting missions, hoping to locate valuable resources and further study the moon as the space agency intends to set up a permanent lunar base for people to live and work.

It’s not clear what changes may be in store for the program as President Donald Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk (now a top Trump adviser) have expressed interest in focusing on Mars.

Firefly and Intuitive Machines are among 14 participants in the CLPS program, but one of only of five companies that have task orders or firm plans to travel to the moon with NASA payloads.

Call it a surefire sign that a modern moon race is underway: Athena is not the only lunar landing mission currently in space.

A spacecraft developed by another Texas-based company — Firefly Aerospace of Austin suburb Cedar Park — just made it to the surface of the moon with a historic touchdown in the early hours of Sunday morning.

There’s also a third vehicle currently in transit: Resilience, a commercial moon lander developed by Japan-based Ispace.

Ispace is aiming to redeem itself after a failed landing attempt in 2023, underpinned by its motto “Never Quit the Lunar Quest.” Resilience also launched on the same rocket as Firefly’s Blue Ghost, though it is taking a much slower trajectory to the moon and is expected to land in June.

Ispace is targeting landing in a 750-mile-long (1,200-kilometer-long) plain called Mare Frigoris — or the “Sea of Cold” — which lies in the moon’s far northern reaches.

Athena, meanwhile, is heading for the south pole region, and Firefly’s Blue Ghost landing site is located within Mare Crisium — or “Sea of Crises” in Latin — which is a sprawling lunar basin near the moon’s equator.

Intuitive Machines’ Athena lander has been making loops around the moon since Monday, when the spacecraft fired its main engine for about eight minutes to steer itself into lunar orbit.

The vehicle is expected to make a total of about 37 laps around the moon, waiting for lunar sunrise to bathe Athena’s landing site in light.

The stopover in lunar orbit has offered the spacecraft plenty of time to capture stunning images of the moon’s surface, which Intuitive Machines has shared on its social media and website.

📸🧵3/4: For reference, Athena captured this image sequence over the Moon's south pole region near her intended landing site, Mons Mouton—one of NASA's designated human landing sites for the Artemis campaign. pic.twitter.com/mQx4gbjMw7

Athena has been in space since it launched out of Florida atop a SpaceX Flacon 9 rocket on February 26.

Intuitive Machines’ Athena lander is 15.3 feet (4.73 meters) tall, which is about as large as a standard giraffe or a double-decker bus. And, if the vehicle were still beholden to Earth’s gravity, it would weigh in at nearly 4,700 pounds (2,120 kilograms).

Overall, the vehicle is about the same size as a golf cart, and it is jam-packed with science instruments and technology demonstrations.

Athena is the same type of spacecraft as Odysseus, the Intuitive Machines-built lander that made history in February 2024 by completing a soft landing on the moon — albeit, tipped over in a sideways orientation.

Both Athena and Odysseus are Nova-C landers, the line of spacecraft that Intuitive Machines has been developing since the company was selected for NASA’s robotic moon lander program in 2018.

Intuitive Machines’ Athena lander has one key objective: scour the lunar surface for water.

Scientists have long believed that the moon’s south pole is home to vast stores of water ice, hidden in the shadowy craters with permanent freezing temperatures or perhaps just below the lunar surface.

During the 10 days that Athena will operate, it’s expected to hunt for water in both locations.

Athena is carrying a hopper that will leap from the vehicle and dive into a nearby crater, and a drill that will dig up to about 3 feet (1 meter) below the surface.

Each is equipped with instruments that can analyze the moon’s soil to search for firm confirmation that water is there.

If that pursuit is successful, it will be a massive deal, said Siegfried Eggl, an assistant professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“We’re 99.9% (sure) we know it’s there — we just don’t know which form it is,” Eggl told CNN this week. “Really going there and touching stuff is essentially the only way to actually know what’s there.“

He added that if NASA’s PRIME-1 drill can locate water ice just below the moon’s surface, it would be “extremely exciting.”

“If the drill would find a little bit of water-rich material right (near) the surface, that will be the best case scenario,” Eggl said, “because it means wherever you go on the south pole, you don’t have to dive into craters, you can probably extract water really, really quickly.”

The Athena lander has been on a fast-pitch race to the moon since the vehicle launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida on February 26. Now, the spacecraft is bracing for its final, daring descent.

Here are the key milestones that Athena is ticking through:

• Descent Orbit Insertion: Early this morning, Athena completed a maneuver called “Descent Orbit Insertion,” firing its main engine to shed speed and decrease the vehicle’s altitude.

• Terrain Relative Navigation: About half an hour before landing, Athena will turn on “Terrain Relative Navigation.” This step lets computers take the wheel as cameras and laser sensors attempt to rapidly map the lunar terrain and steer the vehicle clear of hazards.

• Powered Descent Initiation: Around 15 minutes before touchdown, Athena will light up its engine again, beginning a gradual slowdown that will continue until touchdown.

• Pitch Over: Less than five minutes before landing, Athena will turn itself upright. Before this maneuver, the vehicle will have been flying in a sideways orientation.

• Hazard Detection and Avoidance: Just a few minutes before landing, Athena should be locked in on its landing location. Onboard navigation equipment should have scouted out a safe spot — avoiding treacherous craters, moon rocks and other obstacles.

• Terminal Descent: This is the final step. At just two minutes before landing, Athena will begin using only “inertial measurements,” which means it will rely on instruments that can determine its speed, altitude and orientation without actually using the lunar surface as a reference point.

• Landing: All that’s left is the nail-biting moment of touchdown, which is slated for about 12:30 p.m. ET at Mons Mouton — a plateau near the lunar south pole.