Buckle up for another exciting Moon mission.
Private US company Intuitive Machines is back with its second Nova-C lander nicknamed Athena for the IM-2 mission. It is currently targeted for launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida within a four-day window no earlier than February 26. This would be the company's second landing attempt after the first successful one last year.
The lander will be flown to the Moon's south pole with several NASA payloads including a hopping robot to hunt ice deposits in dark craters.
Athena is a cylindrical six-legged lander that will touchdown about 150 kilometres from the lunar south pole, closer than Chandrayaan-3's Vikram lander which was about 600 kilometres away. After a successful touchdown, Athena will deploy Micro Nova Hopper named 'Gracie,' which will plunge into permanently shadowed craters to find ice deposits.
Gracie weighs about 35 kg and was built jointly by NASA and IM at a cost of $41 million, Space.com reported.
During its operation, the robot will make several leaps, each greater than the last, with the highest being up to 100 metres. It's target crater is named Crater H which is approximately 500 metres from Athena's landing site.
According to IM, the Hopper can "expand the exploration footprint for up to 25 km from the initial landing location." Equipped with three thrusters to help it keep afloat, it has been designed to jump in and out of the dark craters which would otherwise be hard to reach.
NASA explained that Hopper will "use sensors to scan for hydrogen as a proxy for detecting water, indicative of ice deposits. It will also make temperature measurements throughout its journey, including inside extremely cold permanently shadowed regions."
The robot will rely on Nokia 4G/LTE on the lunar surface to transmit data to Athena which will then be relayed to Earth.
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Another major payload is NASA's Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment 1 (PRIME-1) that will drill up to three feet to bring the regolith to the surface and use a mass spectrometer to determine its composition.
"Other technology instruments on this delivery will demonstrate a robust surface communications system and deploy a propulsive drone that can hop across the lunar surface," NASA stated.
The agency is also launching a lunar orbiter as a rideshare mission with Athena. Named Lunar Trailblazer, this orbiter will map the distribution of the different forms of water that exist on the surface of the Moon. It is equipped with two instruments that will determine the forms of water and detail temperature properties of the Moon's surface.
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(Image: NASA)