NASA’s Moon Lander Takes Off for the Lunar South Pole
The Onboard initiative marks Nokia’s inaugural cellular network test on the moon, accompanied by the first rocket-powered lunar drone known as a ‘hopper.’
NASA’s latest lunar mission has commenced, lighting up the Florida sky brilliantly shortly after sunset on February 26.
Intuitive Machines’s Athena lunar lander ascended from Kennedy Space Center’s Pad 39A in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 7:16 p.m. ET. The lunar lander successfully separated from the Falcon rocket around 8:01 p.m. ET and is expected to take approximately one week to reach the moon, aiming for a scheduled landing near the moon’s south pole on March 6.
Athena’s target is Mons Mouton, a lunar plateau situated just 100 miles from the south pole, aiming for the furthest southern landing in American history. Mons Mouton is among the potential landing sites for the Artemis III mission.
Officially referred to as IM-2, Athena’s mission represents the second lunar endeavor by Intuitive Machines, following the launch of its lander named Odysseus a little over a year ago. IM-2 also showcases NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, which aims to pave the way for a commercial lunar economy as part of its broader Artemis program to establish a sustained human presence on the moon.
The IM-2 mission will last for ten days on the moon, testing innovative technologies and gathering crucial data to further the objectives of Artemis and CLPS.
Athena will carry various scientific instruments, including a drill, a retroreflector array that will provide future spacecraft with a permanent reference point on the moon’s surface, a small rover, and a rocket-powered drone named Grace. This drone is called a ‘hopper’ because of its expected hopping flight path as it transitions from one landing location to another.
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Grace’s core mission involves obtaining scientific data from a permanently shaded area within a nearby crater, as well as testing the feasibility of flying a drone on the moon.
“We need to access those harder-to-reach areas,” he stated. “In this instance, we aim to reach the bottom of a crater and explore those permanently shaded regions, where we suspect resources, water, and other volatiles exist that we can eventually extract and utilize. A wheeled rover would face impractical challenges navigating steep slopes, edging over cliffs, and enduring extreme temperatures.”
Athena will also feature the first 4G LTE cellular network on the moon, provided by Nokia, to enable communication between the Athena lander, rover, and hopper. Nokia’s lunar network systems will undergo enhancements for NASA’s upcoming Artemis III mission, which is slated to be the first operation to land humans on the moon since Apollo 17.
“Nokia has excelled in adapting their terrestrial telecom networks, which connect billions of people and devices daily, for use in space, paving the way for future Artemis missions and a sustained human presence on the Moon, Mars, and beyond,” Thornblom noted.
The Lunar Trailblazer, a NASA mission, will also be onboard as a rideshare, remaining in lunar orbit to map the distribution of various forms of water on the moon.
This launch marked SpaceX’s 24th mission this year.
Nasa remains engaged in a race with communist China to be the first to establish a permanent human presence at the lunar south pole.
The initial manned mission of NASA’s Artemis program, Artemis II, is scheduled for launch in April 2026, planning to undertake a slingshot flight around the moon.
