NASA is poised to accomplish the historic lunar landing on March 6 as its Athena Moon lander gets ready to touchdown near the South Pole. This is part of an emerging global effort to map, search for ice and conduct scientific experiments that could support future human exploration on the Moon.
However, the Houston-based private company Intuitive Machines’ Athena will land near Mons Mouton location, unlike ISRO’s own Chandrayaan-3 depicting ‘Shiv Shakti’ touchdown location. August 2023 saw India become the first country to land a spacecraft near the Moon’s South Pole when its Chandrayaan-3 mission succeeded. Athena’s landing adds another major step to lunar exploration and further team NASA’s goals with its Artemis program.
Earlier this week, the lander successfully entered lunar orbit while aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched February 26. Since then it’s been transmitting wonderful images of the Moon’s surface, as it orbited the lunar body several times.
Intuitive Machines reported the Athena’s landing attempt is set for Monday at 11:32 a.m. EST (11 p.m.) from Indian Standard Time on March 7. In Low Lunar Orbit (LLO), the mission team has also confirmed that the lander is in excellent health. On March 5, the company posted on X (formerly Twitter) that Athena has made 24 of her 39 orbits that are waiting for the sun to rise on her Mons Mouton landing site.
The proposed mission will explore the area near the South Pole where water ice could be present at Mons Mouton. These resources will be studied by NASA in the interest of understanding them and supporting long term crewed missions and future lunar colonization. Athena’s landings would be another milestone for NASA’s broadening lunar exploration.
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