HOUSTON — Intuitive Machines’ second lunar lander is on its way to the moon after a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch Feb. 26 that also deployed three rideshare payloads.
The Falcon 9 lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center at 7:16 p.m. Eastern. The IM-2 lunar lander, called Athena by Intuitive Machines, deployed from the upper stage almost 44 minutes later after a second burn of the rocket’s upper stage placed it on a trajectory towards the moon. Ground controllers acquired the first telemetry from the lander nearly 20 minutes after separation.
IM-2 is headed to Mons Mouton, a plateau about the size of Delaware in the south polar region of the moon. The spacecraft is scheduled to attempt a landing around midday Eastern time March 6.
The lander is a design called Nova-C and similar to the company’s first lander, IM-1 or Odysseus, which landed on the moon almost exactly a year ago. The company made a variety of changes to Athena to correct issues from that earlier mission, including a laser altimeter that failed to work, resulting a hard landing that caused the lander to fall on its side.
IM-2 is carrying a NASA payload called Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment 1 (PRIME-1), which will drill up to a meter into the surface to detect any water ice or other volatiles that may be present. PRIME-1 and a laser retroreflector are flying on IM-2 through NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.
“We’re looking to show that we can find what resources already exist on the moon for a sustained human presence,” Nicky Fox, NASA associate administrator for science, said at a prelaunch briefing Feb. 26.
She said the Mons Mouton landing site is “a scientifically strategic location” because it is higher than the surrounding terrain, with craters that have permanently shadowed regions. “We hope that that’s going to provide opportunities for extraordinary science in extraordinary places.”
The lander is carrying several commercial payloads, including the company’s own Micro Nova Hopper, a vehicle designed to hop across the lunar surface using its own propulsion system. Also on board are lunar rovers from Lunar Outpost and Japanese company Dymon Co. Ltd., a communications payload by Nokia that will test 4G/LTE communications with both the hopper and Lunar Outpost rover, a data center payload from Lonestar Data Holdings and thermal protection technologies from Columbia Sportwear.
In addition to IM-2, the Falcon 9 carried three secondary payloads deployed from the upper stage about four minutes after IM-2:
Lunar Trailblazer, a NASA smallsat that will orbit the moon to map the distribution of water across the moon;
Odin, a spacecraft built by asteroid mining startup AstroForge that will fly by a near Earth asteroid to see if it is suitable for future mining missions; and
Chimera, an orbital transfer vehicle developed by Epic Aerospace.
IM-2 is the fourth CLPS mission to launch. Besides last year’s IM-1 lander, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander launched in January 2024 but suffered a propulsion failure that kept it from attempting a landing. Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 1 lander is currently orbiting the moon to attempt a landing early March 2.
“It’s really great to see it coming to fruition,” Fox said of the CLPS program, seeking to maintain a regular rhythm of both mission selections and launches. “We really do want to get on a regular cadence of about two launches a year, two selections of new missions a year, and really keep that momentum going.”
