Mark Megahan
Things didn’t go well for the Athena lunar lander. The cameras were working perfectly, giving mission control a perfect view of what happened after the altimeter failed. Instead of making a soft landing, it’s going down in the history books as the first single vehicle rollover accident on the Moon.
Athena totaled in crash
The multi-million dollar Athena lunar lander has been written off as a total loss. It’s artificially intelligent pilot computer died cold and alone in a crater.
Project engineers relate “the software on board did a credible job of recognizing nearby craters, even with elongated shadows over the terrain.” It simply didn’t have a clue how high it was above the surface.
Knowing the precise height above surface is crucial in the final moments before landing. The autopilot did some quick extrapolation but guessed wrong.
“As a result, the privately built spacecraft struck the lunar surface on a plateau, toppled over, and began to skid across the surface.” Athena didn’t quite land. It smacked down hard and rolled down a slope.
“The lander rotated at least once or twice before coming to a stop in a small, shadowed crater.” All the experts could do is watch in horror.
According to Steve Altemus, chief executive officer of Intuitive Machines, builder of the Athena craft, “the landing was kind of like sliding into second base.” The team scrambled to salvage what they could before the power failed completely.
Race against time
Altemus told the press that it’s been “a busy and tiring week.” It makes the job of his team a lot more difficult because they have big plans to “help lead the development of a lunar economy.” Altemus admits that “expectations were high for this.” That’s because Athena is the second try for the company.
The first mission, Odysseus, “became the first private spacecraft to ever make a soft landing on the Moon.” That project didn’t quite go as planned either. After touching down soft as a feather, it fell over.
Murphy’s law was causing more of an effect than Newton’s laws of physical motion that fateful day. As “Athena skidded across the lunar surface, it dredged up regolith.” That’s what experts call the moon dust, which isn’t classy enough to be considered dirt.
“When it came to a stop, some of this material was blown up into the solar panels—already in a sub-optimal location on its side.” That means it wasn’t getting any charge at all.
Almost immediately, “the team at Intuitive Machines knew their spacecraft was dying.” As Altemus relates, “we knew we had slid into a slightly shadowed crater, and the temperature was very cold.”
Athena didn’t have “sufficient power to power the heaters to keep it warm enough to survive.” The lander managed to extend NASA’s drill but did not operate it. A few “private customers, including Nokia and Lonestar Data Holdings, were able to get some useful information from their payloads.“
