Intuitive Machines’ Athena lander set to land on moon for historic water-hunting mission

A robotic lander named Athena is expected to make its final descent to the moon’s south pole on Thursday, making it the second lunar touchdown for a private U.S. company just this week.

Houston-based Intuitive Machines said on X that Athena is expected to touch down on the moon around 12:30 p.m. ET on Thursday. NASA will be livestreaming coverage about an hour before Athena is expected to land.

Athena is expected to land on Mons Mouton, a flat mountain about 100 miles from the moon’s south pole. If successful, this would mark the closest landing to the moon’s south pole than any previous spacecraft. Athena is carrying a drill for NASA that aims to pull and analyze lunar soil in the area to see if there is frozen water and other compounds in the area.

Athena, a 15-foot-tall robotic spacecraft, is almost identical to Odysseus, another lander Intuitive Machines that touched down on the moon in February 2024. While Odysseus was the first commercially operated spacecraft to land on the moon, the vehicle fell over shortly after landing.

What is Athena’s mission on the moon?

Once Athena successfully lands — and stays upright — it’s expected to deploy a rover called the Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP). It’s a four-wheel vehicle, built by Colorado-based Lunar Outpost, that will test cellular communications equipment in the area and work to create a 3D map of the moon’s surface. If all goes well, MAPP will be the first American robotic rover on the moon.

"Lunar Voyage 1 is not just about exploration—it's about proving that private industry can operate, sustain, and create economic value on the moon," Lunar Outpost CEO Justin Cyrus said in a Feb. 28 statement. "These historic accomplishments create real-world lunar infrastructure, resource utilization, and planetary mobility—essential steps toward a lasting human presence beyond Earth."

Athena will then send out a miniature hopper, called “Gracie,” a small spacecraft designed to specifically search the moon for water.

But an essential part of Athena is NASA’s PRIME-1 experiment, which includes a drill that is designed to dig deep into the moon’s surface and search for water ice and analyze soil. According to NASA, this information will “help scientists better understand lunar resources.”

If there is evidence of water, NASA is eager to analyze it in preparation to send more astronauts to the moon as part of the Artemis program, which has a significant goal of training astronauts on the moon as a stepping stone for a mission to send them to Mars.

"The real goal is Mars,” retired NASA astronaut Steven Swanson said about the Artemis program in a 2010 interview. “We will use the moon as a testbed because Mars is a very difficult mission.”

"As well as Mars, we can also use the moon as a testbed for other things — to see how we can actually gather materials from the moon itself and maybe use that to make our fuel,” Swanson added.

This is the second U.S. spacecraft to land on the moon this week

Another Texas-based company, Firefly Aerospace, launched its Blue Ghost lander in January and it landed on the moon Sunday morning. This was Firefly Aerospace’s first trip to the moon, with help from NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.

Since landing, Blue Ghost has been sending photos and data from the experiments it's been taking on the moon. Similar to Athena’s plans, the spacecraft has collected samples of the lunar soil.