Intuitive Machines IM-2 Lander

[Yazata]

Not bad. Two successful US private company landers almost a year apart. No crashes or upside down mishaps.

There's another of the NASA CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload System) landers up there right now preparing to land at the Moon's south pole: Intuitive Machines IM-2 Athena lander. (Intuitive Machines impressed NASA by landing their IM-1 lander last year.) It completed its lunar orbit injection burn about 8 hours ago with enough accuracy to skip a planned subsequent correction burn.

This landing is more than a technology demonstration, it's an actual NASA Artemis mission intended to be the first to scout out the landing site where the Artemis astronauts plan to land in a few years.

This one launched on February 27 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 and hopes to land on Thursday March 6 at 12:32 PM EST (9:32 AM PST, 17:32 UTC) NASA will live stream it.

One of the features of this one is a little Intuitive Machines built hopper powered by hydrazine jets that hopes to carry cameras and a spectrometer as it leaps into nearby craters to look for water ice. It's said to have a range of 25km, so it should be able to check out multiple craters. (The Moon only has 1/6g, so hopping is practical.) They hope that it spots some lava tubes while it is at it.

There's also a little rover from the separate company Lunar Outpost called MAPP (Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform) This was developed under a contract from NASA for just $1! The company basically gets a chance to get its rover to the Moon, along with a chance to impress NASA and maybe win future contracts. It carries an advanced camera developed by MIT to look at rocks, regolith and (hopefully) ice. MAPP in turn will release a micro-rover the size of a match box from MIT that carries a thermal sensor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IM-2

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-s...n-landing/

Intuitive Machines photo from lunar orbit showing the landing site. It looks more rugged than it actually is because of the Sun is always on the horizon at this polar location, leaving craters permanently in shadow which makes NASA hope they will find ice there.

[Image: GlO7TJbWIAAyho8?format=jpg&name=900x900]

[Yazata]

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/WGf4aWipxC0

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IM-2 has completed descent orbit insertion and IM-2 continues to check out as healthy.

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15 minutes to landing - all good so far

Conducting braking burn

[Yazata]

Landing data was very confused. (At one point the altimeter had it a kilometer beneath the lunar surface!) If the flight computer depends on that data to land, could be bad.

Lander still transmitting and responding to commands. Solar panels are charging, but don't know how much.

They are safeing the descent engine and trying to determine what happened.

Speculation outside IM is that once again the lander fell over!

Well, it's on the Moon, it's still alive, but it isn't right. Remains to be seen what its exact status is and how much of the mission can be salvaged.

[Yazata]

Intuitive Machines CEO said that IM-2 is generating power, but "not enough". So they are shutting down systems to conserve.

Consensus among space geeks outside IM is that it is laying on its side. Still no confirmation though.

Lunar Outpost CEO says that they hope that they can still deploy their MAPP rover even if IM-2 is on its side.

NASA+ news conference will be streamed at the address below at 4:00 PM EST/1:00 PM PST

https://plus.nasa.gov/scheduled-video/in...onference/

[Yazata]

It definitely is on its side

(Intuitive Machines photo)

[Image: GlcbhlcX0AAHDl9?format=jpg&name=medium]