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Private Intuitive Machines moon lander fell over inside crater at lunar south pole, photo reveals

two legs of a moon lander jutting up with the earth half-lit overhead

The two legs of Intuitive Machines' private Athena moon lander jut up to the sky, with a half-lit blue Earth above, after the probe fell over during a landing attempt near the lunar south pole on March 6. 2025. (Image credit: Intuitive Machine)

It's a haunting photo, but at least it has answers: For the second time in as many years, a private Intuitive Machines lunar lander has tipped over on the moon.

After a day of uncertainty following a harrowing moon landing attempt, the company Intuitive Machines sealed the fate of its latest lunar probe Athena. The spacecraft, which attempted a historic landing in rugged terrain near the south pole of the moon on Thursday (March 6), had toppled on its side inside a frigid crater.

A photo taken by the Athena lander on the moon showed as much. It looked toward Earth, shining blue and half-lit over the moon's horizon, which was canted to the right as two of the Athena lander's legs jutted into the sky after its touchdown in the Mons Mouton region of the lunar south pole.

"Images downlinked from Athena on the lunar surface confirmed that Athena was on her side," Intuitive Machines wrote in a mission update on Friday (March 7). The lander touched down about 250 meters from its target zone, the company added. "This was the southernmost lunar landing and surface operations ever achieved."

Despite that feat, the company had to end the mission early since Athena was stuck on its side.

"With the direction of the sun, the orientation of the solar panels, and extreme cold temperatures in the crater, Intuitive Machines does not expect Athena to recharge," the company addded. "The mission has concluded and teams are continuing to assess the data collected throughout the mission."

A fisheye view of the moon with a spacecraft to the right of it. There is a yellowish gold box on the craft.

It marked an ignominous end for Athena and Intuitive's Machine's IM-2 mission, the second lunar landing attempt by the Houston-based company. Its first moon landing on the IM-1 mission last year also tipped over when one of its Odysseus probe's four landing legs broke after hit the lunar surface faster than expected.

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For IM-2, Intuitive Machines added additional cameras and other guidance and navigation upgrades to Athena, along with some ambitious payloads. The lander carried two small rovers, a Nokia 4G communications system, a hopping robot called Grace and an ice-hunting drill for NASA called PRIME-1. The $62.5 million mission marked the second by Intuitive Machines for NASA under the agency's Commercial Lunar Payloads Services, or CLPS, program.

A view of the moon with the legs of a landing spacecraft and its body at right

"After landing, mission controllers were able to accelerate several program and payload milestones, including NASA’s PRIME-1 suite, before the lander’s batteries depleted," Intuitive Machines said in its update.

During a press conference after Athena's lunar landing on Thursday, Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus said he still considered the attempt "a success" in that it reached the moon and operated, if only for a bit, a week after launching from Earth atop a SpaceX rocket. He said the company will take what it learns from IM-2 and apply it to its next moon mission, IM-3, in 2026. The company also has a $117 million NASA contract for a fourth flight in 2027.

Both Intuitive Machines and NASA stressed that the rugged nature of south pole region of the moon, with its harsh sunlight angles and fifficulty to reach, made it a particularly new challenge for a moon landing. There was also "limited direct communications" with Earth to add to the mix.

"It's this twilight space of shadows and grays that it was interesting," Tim Crain, chief technology officer of Intuitive Machines, said of the crater lighting during Athena's descent. "I'm really proud of how well our crater tracking system did in this very unusual lighting condition. So, we'll get it next time."

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Tariq is the Editor-in-Chief of Space.com and joined the team in 2001, first as an intern and staff writer, and later as an editor. He covers human spaceflight, exploration and space science, as well as skywatching and entertainment. He became Space.com's Managing Editor in 2009 and Editor-in-Chief in 2019. Before joining Space.com, Tariq was a staff reporter for The Los Angeles Times covering education and city beats in La Habra, Fullerton and Huntington Beach. In October 2022, Tariq received the Harry Kolcum Award for excellence in space reporting from the National Space Club Florida Committee. He is also an Eagle Scout (yes, he has the Space Exploration merit badge) and went to Space Camp four times as a kid and a fifth time as an adult. He has journalism degrees from the University of Southern California and New York University. You can find Tariq at Space.com and as the co-host to the This Week In Space podcast with space historian Rod Pyle on the TWiT network. To see his latest project, you can follow Tariq on Twitter @tariqjmalik.

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