Now we know why Athena’s private land collapsed at the moon earlier this year.
Athena, the second lunar landing construction and operated by the Houston Intuitive Machines company, fell from the side shortly after touching the South Lunar Pole on March 6. Athena’s solar panels could not harvest Dodas Dasared’s day.
More than two months later, Intuitive Machines has completed an autopsy, setting anomaly on three themes that worked together to tear Athena.
The first was the interference with the reading Altimeter readings of Athena, the instrument that helped to measure its distance from the lunar surface.
“In the final phase of the descent, we saw the noise of the signal and distortion that did not allow precise altitude readings,” said the CEO of Intuitive Machines Steve Altemus on Tuesday (May 13). Directing a gain call that was also always A-2.
The second problem were the challenging lighting conditions in the AThenna landing zone, which was only 100 miles (160 kilometers) more or less of the southern pole of the moon.
“The topography of the South Pole and low angle light created long shadows and dim lighting conditions that challenged the precision capacity of our landing system,” Altemus said.
The third factor was Athena’s committed capacity to recognize craters in the landing area. The Fucking Optical Navigation System used photos collected by the NASA lunar recognition orbiter (LRO) at an altitude of 62 miles (100 kilometers).
This Lro image “could not explain precisely how craters appear at lower altitudes with the lighting conditions of the South Pole as it approaches the landing site,” Altemus said.
IM-2 was supported by the NASA Lunar Useful Cargo Services Program, which places the scientific agency in private robotic moon teams. The objective is to collect profitable data that help the NASA artemis program or Creed’s lunar exploration.
Athena carried a suite of NASA scientific instruments and several other useful loads, including the “Grace” spacecraft and the MAPP Rover of intuitive machines, of the Company of the Company of Colorado. Athena’s fall prevented those two other spacecraft from displaying on the lunar surface.
IM-2 followed after the IM-IM-IM-IM-IM-IM mission that put the Odysseus of intuitive machines on the moon in February 2024. Like Athena, Odysseus could not remain in an upright position, moving forward after breaking the touchdown. But Odysseus, the first private space on soft land on the moon managed to operate on the lunar surface for seven days of land before darkening.
Intuitive Machines is working hard to make sure that your next moon Lander, the vehicle that will be launched on the IM-3 mission in 2026, stands up. The company is implementing knowledge-based solutions won Duration IM-1 and IM-2, Altemus said.
“We have added different and redundant altimeters to the sensor suite, and they are going through more rigorous and extreme flight tests of what we have done before,” he said on Tuesday’s call.
“We have incorporated an additional lighting industry sensor for surface speed measurements,” he added. “We have expanded the ground crater database on board for better navigation through the moon surface.”
The team is also feeding the detailed images of the South Pole captured IM-2 in automatic learning algorithms to improve the navigation and crater navigation capabilities of future missions.
“Advancing, we will do it,” Altemus said. “Earth gently, vertical lands, land ready to operate.”
