WASHINGTON: Intui­tive Machines said on Thursday that its robotic Athena lander has landed on the moon’s surface but details of the spacecraft’s status and health remained unclear, a tense moment in the company’s second such attempt.

The six-legged Athena lander, carrying 11 payloads and scientific instruments, descended over a flat-topped mountain named Mons Mouton, about 160 kilometre from the lunar south pole, and had aimed to have made a landing at around 12:32pm ET. But by that time, the lander’s engine was still running, telemetry showed, as it appeared to hover over the moon.

Company mission control staff commanded the lander’s engine and systems to shut down amid its uncertain status. Mission control staff then said the lander, on the surface, was powered on with its engines shut down. It was unclear whether the lander was standing upright or on its side.

After launching atop a SpaceX rocket on Feb 26 from Florida, Athena has flown a winding path to the moon some 383,000 km away from Earth. The Houston-based company’s first moon landing attempt almost exactly a year ago, using its Odysseus lander, marked the most successful touchdown attempt at the time by a private company.

But its hard touchdown — due to a faulty laser altimeter used to judge its distance from the ground — broke a lander leg and caused the craft to topple over, dooming many of its onboard experiments.

Five nations have made successful soft landings in the past — the then-Soviet Union, the US, China, India and, last year, Japan. The US and China are both rushing to put their astronauts on the moon later this decade, each courting allies and giving their private sectors a key role in spacecraft development.

India’s first uncrewed moon landing, Chandrayaan-3 in 2023, touched down near the lunar south pole. The region is eyed by major space powers for its potential for resource extraction once humans return to the surface — subsurface water ice could theoretically be converted into rocket fuel.

Austin-based Firefly Aerospace this month celebrated a clean touchdown of its Blue Ghost lander, making the most successful soft landing by a private company to date.

Intuitive Machines, Firefly, Astrobotic Technology and a handful of other companies are building lunar spacecraft under Nasa’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services programme, an effort to seed development of low-budget spacecraft that can scour the moon’s surface before the US sends astronauts there around 2027.

Published in Dawn, March 7th, 2025