NASA to Launch Second Commercial Probe, Aims for Moon’s South Pole

The SpaceX logo on a Falcon 9 rocket at the Kennedy Space Center, in Cape Canaveral, Fla., on March 2, 2024. Joe Skipper/Reuters

NASA is set to take its latest unmanned moonshot from the Florida coast on Feb. 26, this time taking close aim at the ultimate destination of its Artemis Program: the Lunar South Pole.

The second lunar lander named Athena, built by the company Intuitive Machines, will leave the planet atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center’s launch complex 39A on Feb. 26. This is the latest example of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative and Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 mission.

It will take Athena about a week to get to the moon, landing no earlier than March 6, aiming for a lunar plateau at the south pole called Mons Mouton. NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft will also be launching as a “rideshare with the IM-2 delivery,” NASA said in a press release.

“The IM-2 mission will be one of the first on-site demonstrations of resource use on the Moon.”

The technology onboard Athena includes a drill and a mass spectrometer for studying the soil on that plateau.

The craft will be capped by a passive laser retroreflector array, which will help give future spacecraft a permanent reference point on the moon surface that can bounce laser light back to any orbiting or incoming spacecraft.

Meanwhile, NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer will remain in lunar orbit, mapping the distribution of different forms of water on the moon.

Athena’s mission marks the second collaboration between Intuitive Machines and NASA. Its launch comes roughly one year after the first mission made the lander Odysseus the first American-built craft to land on the moon and send data back to Earth in the 21st century.

“What we’ve done in the process of this mission, though, is we’ve fundamentally changed the economics of landing on the moon and kicked open the door for a robust, thriving cislunar economy in the future,” Steve Altemus, CEO and co-founder of Intuitive Machines, said.

Feb. 26 is the earliest launch date slated for this mission, and live launch coverage will be available on NASA+.

A pre-launch lunar delivery readiness media teleconference is scheduled for 11:30 a.m. on Feb. 26, and will feature Intuitive Machines senior vice president of space systems, Trent Martin; associate administrator of NASA Headquarters’ Science Mission Directorate, Nicky Fox; and the launch weather officer from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s 45th Weather Squadron, Melody Lovin.

NASA continues to be in a space race with communist China to be the first to establish a permanent human presence on the lunar south pole.

The first manned mission of NASA’s Artemis program is slated to launch in April 2026.