Private lunar lander declared dead after landing sideways

Private lunar lander Athena fails mission after sideways landing in moon crater, ending $62 million NASA experiment.

A private lunar lander is no longer working after landing sideways in a crater near the moon’s south pole and its mission is over, officials have confirmed.

The news came after the botched landing attempt by Texas-based Intuitive Machines.

Launched last week, the lander named Athena missed its mark by more than 250 metres and ended up in a frigid crater, the company said, declaring it dead.

Athena managed to send back pictures confirming its position and activate a few experiments before going silent. NASA and other customers had packed the lander with tens of millions of dollars’ worth of experiments including an ice drill, drone and pair of rovers to roam the unexplored terrain ahead of astronauts’ planned arrival later this decade.

It’s unlikely Athena’s batteries can be recharged given the way the lander’s solar panels are pointed and the extreme cold in the crater.

“The mission has concluded and teams are continuing to assess the data collected throughout the mission,” the company said in a statement.

The bigger, four-wheeled rover never made it off the fallen lander, but data beamed back indicates it survived and could have driven away had everything gone well, said Lunar Outpost, the Colorado company that owns it.