Moon photo reveals how lunar landing just went wrong

The Athena moon lander beamed home a poignant lunar view. Soon after, its mission ended.

After performing excellently on its flight to and around the moon, Intuitive Machine's Athena spacecraft experienced a landing mishap that resulted in the 15-foot-tall robot lying on its side. The Houston-based aerospace company released an image from the askew craft on March 7, with shadowed Earth in the distance. It's lying in a crater some 250 meters, or 820 feet, from its intended landing site.

From this problematic position, the privately-built but NASA-funded lander likely cannot produce power to operate.

"With the direction of the sun, the orientation of the solar panels, and extreme cold temperatures in the crater, Intuitive Machines does not expect Athena to recharge," Intuitive Machines said in a statement. "The mission has concluded and teams are continuing to assess the data collected throughout the mission."

Landing on the moon remains daunting, largely because it's a world with virtually no atmosphere to slow spacecraft down. A craft must plummet to the surface almost perfectly, as thrusters fire to slow its descent onto a surface teeming with pits and craters. Although the company Firefly Aerospace completed a successful moon touchdown on March 2, and Chinese and Indian craft have had recent landing successes, Intuitive Machines' first lunar spacecraft Odysseus sustained damage while landing awkwardly in 2024. The same year, a Japanese craft landed upside down, on its head.

"I think we can agree, particularly today, that landing on the moon is extremely hard," Nicola Fox, who leads NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said at an agency news conference on March 6 after the company revealed a probable landing mishap.

A view of the Athena lander on the lunar surface with Earth in the background. Credit: Intuitive Machines

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Intuitive Machines, however, didn't venture to the relatively well-trodden equatorial areas previously visited by Apollo astronauts. It descended into the dark and shadowy south pole region, a resource-rich area, but one with precious landing conditions. "This southern pole region is lit by harsh sun angles and limited direct communication with the Earth," the company said. "This area has been avoided due to its rugged terrain and Intuitive Machines believes the insights and achievements from IM-2 will open this region for further space exploration."

With Athena's mission over, it appears that a key objective of the mission – a NASA drill intended to bore some three feet into the lunar ground in search of water ice and other resources – won't perform as planned. (Intuitive Machines noted, somewhat opaquely, that it was "able to accelerate several program and payload milestones," including this drill, before losing power.)

The search for water ice on the moon is a pivotal part of NASA's lunar ambitions. Harvesting water ice, the space agency has emphasized, is crucial for making drinkable water, oxygen, and fuel for rockets. Over eons, comets and meteors striking the moon could have transported bounties of water to the moon's surface. But without finding and mining this ice, the U.S. cannot establish a permanent presence on the moon, a pivotal part of its Artemis program.

This Intuitive Machines mission was funded by NASA as part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which it hopes will set the stage for its lunar presence. In the coming years, NASA intends to land astronauts on the moon, too. The agency currently expects to bring astronauts to the moon in mid-2027, wherein they'll spend a week exploring eerie craters of the moon's south pole.