After less than a day, the Athena lander is dead on the Moon
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/after-less-than-a-day-the-athena-lander-is-dead-on-the-moon/
After less than a day, the Athena lander is dead on the Moon
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/03/after-less-than-a-day-the-athena-lander-is-dead-on-the-moon/
25 Comments
It’s almost like building a lunar lander taller than it is wide is not a good idea. Or something.
It’s almost like NASA designed the LEM to be wider than it was tall for a reason …
These things need a flipper so they can reorient themselves, like the most successful bots in Robot Wars
Ah, private sector innovation and efficiency. Succeeding where the government failed.
Oh wait.
This is NASAs future, I fear. Most of it will probably be parceled off to SpaceX and other private companies like this one, and I guess we can look forward to less safe conditions for astronauts, less effective missions, and higher cost.
All worth it though — a few rich guys are getting richer and that’s what matters.
I wonder if they’ll release a full report of what happened. But I personally think it landed upright and then got blown over by the engine not turning off automatically when it touched down. They had to send a manual command to shut down the main thruster.
The fact that its solar panels and all 4 antennas were intact after it tipped makes me think it wasn’t a crash, but more of a “soft” tip over.
I don’t think the design or center of gravity had much to do with it. The cog on this thing was low, despite the design. The engine is the heaviest part of the lander and that is near the bottom.
I am surprised they don’t have redundant sensors (afaik) built into the lander for landing detection. They have relied a lot on that laser system, but you’d think adding in a LiDAR sensor would also help. Did Lunar regolith prevent the laser from detecting the lander had touched down?
Space is hard. 2 of the other space crafts that launched with Athena are also now lost in space. IM already has contracts for IM-3 and IM-4, plus a contract to develop an LTV prototype for NASA. So hopefully they can find some success.
I just think about how many times SpaceX has failed over the years before finding success. They aren’t publicly traded though so they are somewhat insulated from the criticisms.
I will wager the craft failed to sense the lunar surface which is why the engine didn’t shut down.
If I was building a lander, tipping over and becoming useless would be something I would spend a lot of time figuring out how to prevent.
Yeah, well let’s see *you* last more than a day on the moon
Honestly I’m kind of shocked they went with basically the same design. Hopefully they learn from this if the company survives
They need to bring one of the robot battle people into the group. They seem to have perfected getting a robot the right way up. Also… spinning blades of death just in case.
I came to the comments expecting to read about some technical failure….
Ur telling me the lander….just….fell over?
Lmfao travels through deep space but cant keep its head up like an infant 🤣
Hire someone who’s built a battle bot to make an arm that can flip it next time. Also how handy would a lunar lander with a flame thrower be? Probably not very but I’d still rather it had one than not.
Did it come in with too much lateral movement? Or did it try to land on too much of a slope? I’d think either of these would cause it to tip over. Or a combination of the two. Maybe one of the legs landed on a rock?
Getting something onto another celestial body is already an achievement, so I’m still calling this a win.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|——-|———|—|
|[CoG](/r/Space/comments/1j5su76/stub/mgk61ld “Last usage”)|Center of Gravity (see CoM)|
|CoM|Center of Mass|
|[FAA](/r/Space/comments/1j5su76/stub/mgjxc1h “Last usage”)|Federal Aviation Administration|
|[IM](/r/Space/comments/1j5su76/stub/mgjvfnr “Last usage”)|Initial Mass deliverable to a given orbit, without accounting for fuel|
|[JSC](/r/Space/comments/1j5su76/stub/mgjmk9o “Last usage”)|Johnson Space Center, Houston|
|[KSP](/r/Space/comments/1j5su76/stub/mgjh2ji “Last usage”)|*Kerbal Space Program*, the rocketry simulator|
|[LEM](/r/Space/comments/1j5su76/stub/mgjk8ia “Last usage”)|(Apollo) [Lunar Excursion Module](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module) (also Lunar Module)|
|[LIDAR](/r/Space/comments/1j5su76/stub/mgk61ld “Last usage”)|[Light Detection and Ranging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidar)|
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I don’t blame the engineers. I’m sure they knew. I blame the mgmt.
Gonna be so much literal garbage on the moon because of the private sector
It landed on the lander the landed a couple of days ago
It is unacceptable they did not include a flipper type mechanism to prevent what happened last time. IM’s stock price is getting hammered and rightfully so. They have put people’s jobs at risk for refusing to adjust. If it happens again they might not recover.
So glad we’re littering the moon. On the bright side, maybe this thing saves a life one day.
The mantra of the robotics guys “further, faster, cheaper” turns out to be a false premise. Human exploration will always do more for less cost. Robotic failures have cost far more than any manned missions.
At this point they should just design them to operate while on their side
Eventually they will get tired of the frustration and just use mech-jeb.
Mmmm privatized space travel, what good deal. Now can we mandate that they go pickup their space trash?
I’m guessing by the time the next humans step foot on the moon it will look like a junk yard.
I m sad. First time yes it can be. but now they doing some mistake I think.