Intuitive Machines' lander gets up-close look of moon ahead of landing: See photos

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The Athena lunar lander has captured its first up-close look at Earth's cosmic neighbor since it began orbiting the moon less than a week into its journey to the surface.

Intuitive Machines, the Houston, Texas aerospace company operating the spacecraft, shared the striking imagery after Athena entered lunar orbit on Monday. The six-legged spacecraft, which got off the ground last Wednesday from Florida, has since been circling the moon once about every two hours ahead of a planned landing attempt Thursday, according to the company.

Meanwhile, a separate lunar lander has already made it to the moon to begin about two weeks of surface operations. That spacecraft, named Blue Ghost, is being operated by Firefly Aerospace, which is also based in Texas.

Both lunar landers are on missions for NASA, which paid tens of millions of dollars for Firefly Aerospace and Intuitive Machines to develop spacecraft to explore different regions of the moon.

The expeditions are part of a slate of uncrewed lunar missions the U.S. space agency is financing to pave the way for astronauts to return as early as 2027 under NASA's Artemis program. NASA envisions the moon as a crucial pit stop to prepare U.S. astronauts and their vehicles to travel to Mars.

Lunar landing: Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander makes it to the moon

Athena captures images of the moon after entering lunar orbit

Atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the Athena lander got off the ground Wednesday, Feb. 26 from the Kennedy Space Center on the historic launch pad 39A  – the site of NASA's Apollo moon mission launches.

Not long after launching, the spacecraft, on a mission known as IM-2, captured its first "selfies" with Earth in the background. Athena then began a series of three maneuvers that ended Sunday to help correct its moon-bound trajectory before making it to lunar orbit Monday, according to NASA.

Intuitive Machines expects Athena to orbit the moon 39 times while the spacecraft waits for the sun to rise on the moon's south pole, providing sunlight to power operations when the spacecraft lands. Up next for Athena is a maneuver to get the lander as close to the surface as possible before attempting to touch down.

The region where Athena will attempt to land is near a plateau known as Mons Mouton, which would be further south than any lander has ever reached, according to Intuitive Machines. The mesa-like lunar mountain towers over a landscape carved by craters, including the Shackleton Crater – a cold, dark region where water ice and other volatile materials that turn easily into gas are thought to be abundant.

Intuitive Machines, NASA to provide coverage of landing: How to watch

Athena is slated to touch down around 12:30 p.m. Thursday, March 6 on the moon's south pole.

Both NASA and Intuitive Machines will provide live coverage of the landing, beginning at 11:30 a.m. EST on the IM-2 mission page and NASA's streaming service. The content on both streams is identical.

NASA will also share written updates on its Artemis blog.

What to know about the IM-2 lunar landing mission

As the mission name suggests, IM-2 is the second mission NASA hired Intuitive Machines to carry out.

Intuitive Machines etched its name in the history books in February 2024 when its spacecraft, Odysseus, became the first commercially-built lunar lander to make it to the moon. The lunar mission also marked the United States' return to the moon for the first time in more than five decades since NASA's Apollo era came to an end.

The solar-powered Athena lander, a hexagonal cylinder capable of carrying up to 300 pounds of cargo, is now less than a day away from potentially becoming the company's second spacecraft to land on the moon.

The $62.5 million mission is part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, or CLPS. The CLPS program allows the U.S. space agency to find lower-cost methods to finance lunar deliveries without having to develop spacecraft of its own, as it historically has done.

The main experiment onboard Athena is NASA's PRIME-1 (Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1,) which will search for resources like water in the lunar soil that could be extracted and used by future explorers to produce fuel or breathable oxygen.

Additionally, an instrument known as a laser retroreflector array (LRA) on the top deck of the lander will be able to bounce laser light back at any incoming spacecraft – a vital capability to determine the locations of lunar landers more accurately.

Other objectives included testing a Nokia LTE 4G communications system and deploying a propulsive drone capable of hopping across the lunar surface.

Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander captures views of surface

Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost spacecraft took a much longer route to make it Sunday to the moon after lifting off Jan. 15 from the same launch site and atop the same model of rocket.

After arriving more than two weeks ago in lunar orbit, the Blue Ghost lander, standing more than 6 feet tall, took about an hour to descend and land upright. Shortly after, the lander witnessed a dazzling sunrise in images Firefly Aerospace released Monday.

Blue Ghost's landing site is near a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille on the moon's Earth-facing side. The region is located within Mare Crisium, a 300-mile-wide basin in the northeast quadrant of the moon's near side, that is believed to have been created by early volcanic eruptions and flooded with basaltic lava more than 3 billion years ago.

Now that it's on the surface, the lander has commenced its $101.5 million mission of deploying a fleet of 10 NASA science instruments, including an X-band antenna that has allowed Firefly Aerospace to rapidly downlink high-definition imagery, videos and science data.

The technology will next be put to use for a complete lunar day, equivalent to about 14 Earth days.

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for Paste BN. Reach him at elagatta@gannett.com