Artist's impression shows Intuitive Machines’ Athena lander touch down near the lunar south pole
Artist's impression shows Intuitive Machines’ Athena lander touch down near the lunar south pole
The space exploration company Intuitive Machines is preparing to land its second mission, IM-2, on the Moon, approximately eight days after launch from Earth. The Athena landing module is set to touch down near the lunar south pole, a region where deep craters remain in perpetual shadow due to the Sun’s low position on the horizon. These permanently shadowed areas are believed to contain water ice, a potential resource for future crewed missions. From the landing site, mission controllers plan to deploy and manoeuvre a rocket-powered hopping drone, named Grace, into one of these craters via a series of controlled jumps. Among the technologies onboard Grace is a radiometer developed by DLR and Freie Universität Berlin to measure the temperature inside lunar craters.
