Athena, Next US Commercial Moon Lander, is ready for spectacular lunar science

Athena, Next US Commercial Moon Lander, is ready for spectacular lunar science

By Gayoung Lee Edited by Lee Billings

As the United States and China increase their 21st century career to land humans on the Moon, it is easy to overlook another aspect of lunar exploration that in many ways has become a “without contest”: Missions built and commercially operated.

As part of NASA Commercial Lunar Useful Services (CLPS) Program, the private companies of the United States have been launching a constant flow of innovative robotics on the moon in unmatched numbers. And that trend will continue at the end of this month with the launch of the next CLPS mission, IM-2, of the private company intuitive machines. Run from the NASA Kennedy Space Center in a Spacex Falcon 9 rocket not before February 26, IM-2 is the opportunity of the company’s redemption after its inaugural predecessor, IM-1, inclined to Askew during its touchdown At the beginning of last year. This time, the land of IM-2, Athena, will seek to paste its landing and transport a robust variety of science and technology experiments in the neighborhood of Mons Mouton, a plateau near the South Lunar Pole.

NASA officials and intuitive machines confirmed the details of the launch and prevailed the science of the mission during a press conference on February 7.

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“The IM-2 mission is particularly special …, since it is largely dedicated to lunar technological demonstrations that are really fundamental to create a lunar infrastructure led by the United States”, Niki Werkheiser, director of technological maturation in the direction NASA’s space technology mission, he said during the informative session. These manifestations include NASA Prime-1 (Polar Resource Ice Mining Experiment 1), which is “capable of identifying and quantifying water [ice]”And other volatile substances on lunar soil thanks to a drill that can reach a meter towards the surface.” Prove that we can collect these volatiles using technological demonstrations on board will not only help us better understand the origins of our solar system, but also that They will also be useful for our future astronauts for in situ resources, including drinking water, breathing and creation Rocket Fuel, ”added Nicky Fox, added, Associate Administrator of the NASA Science Mission Management, during the informative session.

Other key technologies aboard Athena are Micro Nova Hopper and the Lunar Surface Communication System (LSC), developed by intuitive machines and the Nokia Bell laboratories, respectively, as part of the NASA inflection points technology initiative. Nicknamed “Gracie” after the Grace Hopper software pioneer, the micro nova hopper intends to jump from Athena at some point after the touchdown of the landing and embark on a series of incremental hops towards the crater H, a 20 meters deep , permanently shaded crater Approximately half a kilometer away. There it will sink for any sign of volatiles in or under the surface.

“The purpose of [hopper] The demonstration is to show that we can reach extreme environments with different technologies of rovers, ”said Trent Martin, Senior Vice President of Space Systems in Intuitive Machines, in the information. Nokia LSC, which uses the same 4G LTE communications technology as a smartphone, will maintain all useful Athena “online” and connected as they branch in their respective objectives. “We are configured to handle the large number of useful charges that we have in this mission … and the support operations of the world of different control centers for several useful charges that are in the mission,” Martin added.

But Athena is also helping to continue previous missions and in progress. For example, it carries a small aluminum device provided by NASA called retroreflective matrix laser, or LRA, which the space agency intends to use as a node in a larger lunar network to identify more precisely the locations of Lunar Lunar Monday. And in his rocket to the moon, Athena shares a trip with several secondary useful charges, including NASA’s lunar pioneer, a satellite with a moon orbit scheduled to provide high -resolution sophisticated maps from where water can stalk in or under the airless surface of the moon.

In addition to highlighting part of the science of the mission in the informative session, the officials also offered guarantees that Athena would not succumb to the same failures that led to their predecessor, the terrifying IM-1, nicknamed Odysseus, to land on the moon. During his landing on February 22 of last year, Odysseus knocked down about 30 degrees out of the killer, breaking one leg and falling aside, despite the previous problems of intuitive machines that sought to have arranged.

“After the mission, we go through what we call the ‘hot washing’,” Martin said in the informative session. “We identify 85 things that we must leave and look, 10 of them should be implemented before our mission IM-2—[and] In fact, we have implemented the 85 of them. “

The team also made a margin of error up to 10 degrees of the planned trajectory still allow Athena to begin normal operations. If the trajectory is further, Athena’s functionality will depend on how Martin said. “If we are out, let’s say something happened like the last time, and we ended up our side, obviously we could not display simulacros,” he admitted. “However, there are many instruments in all those systems that we could still operate, like the last time, [when] We were able to get some of the data of the instruments that were in the field of Odysseus, and we could send that to the earth. “

With Athena, “we are taking a kind of novel technologies and turning them into institutionalized capabilities, and that is really important,” Werkheiser said in the informative session. Given the nature very focused on the technology of the IM-2 mission, the technological blip are more or less an inevitable part of the entire scheme, he said. “If we learn what we need to learn [from failures]And we could only do that doing what we are doing now, so that is a success for us. “