Latest posts tagged with #IM2 on Bluesky
Intuitive Machines have not yet released their analysis of the landing, but this OHRC image has to be a major contribution to that analysis. I have never seen anything like this before but we don't have images like this for most landings. It would be great to have this for Luna 23, for instance […]
A map of the landing site of IM-2 Athena, with comments suggesting what seems to have happened to the lander. The image is from Chandrayaan 2's OHRC instrument. It shows two craters with the lander lying in the southern one. Odd gouges on the northern and southern rims of the northern crater suggest that Athena's footpads scraped the surface as it was moving near-horizontally southwards. I have never seen anything like that elsewhere, but we don't have such great pictures of most landers. It would be great to see this for Luna 23, for instance.
LRO imaged the Athena landing site:
https://lroc.im-ldi.com/images/1409
but again the most impressive and informative images were taken by India's Chandrayaan 2 orbiter. Its Orbiter High Resolution Camera (OHRC) took an image and Indian space enthusiast […]
[Original post on mastodon.social]
Finally, at the bottom of the image in the last post is a version with vertical exaggeration (my party trick) which makes it easier to see the sliver of landscape outside the crater. Half a crater is visible outside the foreground crater at right. We will see it tomorrow in a very different […]
The surface image from Athena is shown in 3 versions (original courtesy of Intuitive Machines, obvously). At top the original geometry, where the wide angle lens curves the horizon. In the middle the horizon is straightened, and below it the image is stretched vertically to make details in the landscape outside the crater easier to see. At top right the little Yaoki image from yesterday is added as an inset. A small rock on the crater floor is visible in the Yaoki image and the Athena image.
Another look at the surface view from IM-2 Athena. It's lying on its side with the TRIDENT drill on the top as seen here. It was extended out from the camera to test its motion and other operations but couldn't touch the surface. The view is to the northwest […]
[Original post on mastodon.social]
An annotated version of the previous image. It points out what seems to be a strut or part of a second leg, a rock in the distance, and also that the footpad looks like it is bent.
This is an annotated version of that image.
#moon #IM2 #athena #yaoki
An image from the tiny Yaoki rover on the IM-2 Athena lander. The rover was not deployed but it could take pictures before deployment showing where it would fall as it dropped off the lander. Here it shows a broken leg and footpad, a curved plate which was on the footpad and has broken off it, and a bit of brightly-lit crater rim.
The second rover was a tiny vehicle called Yaoki from Japan:
https://dymon.co.jp/en/yaoki/
It couldn't deploy but could take pictures looking 'down' (in this case sideways) and about 25 images were taken […]
[Original post on mastodon.social]
This article from NASASpaceFlight.com:
www.nasaspaceflight.com/2025/03/blue-ghost-im-2-...
gives an account of the IM-2 Athena landing, after looking at Firefly's mission (they landed only 4 days apart). It includes this surface image […]
I expect everyone knows what happened to Athena... it landed but fell over, ending on its side in a shaded crater floor, its legs poking up into the sunlight. It couldn't recharge its batteries so it just did what it could (which was quite a lot) before the power ran out in about 12 hours. Views […]
This image came from Intuitive Machines but I can't find the source now. It began as a polar projection which I rectified to make the horizon level (a cylindrical projection). I modified the radial scale, shrinking the foreground to give a more map-like geometry and re-polared it (so to speak) to make this view of the landing site. We see glare looking back at the sun and also away from the sun - the zero-phase effect. North is roughly at the top here.
We zoomed in to the landing site with the last set of maps, and Athena zoomed in too, taking images as it approached the landing site:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/intuitivemachines/
I think the image I used here came from a tweet, but I can't find the […]
[Original post on mastodon.social]
That last map shows a bright streak along the lander descent path. The lander seems to have struck the surface with some horizontal velocity and toppled into a crater, landing on its side. A similar fate befell the first Intuitive Machines lander, alas. The site is about 400 m southeast of the […]
Four maps zoom in to the landing site of Athena. At top left a context map shows the rolling top of the Mons Mouton plateau. The nearby VIPER and PROSPECT sites are other areas considered for CLPS missions. At top right the smooth surface of he landing site is apparent. At lower right is the actual landing site with the lander lying in a crater and a bright streak along the descent ground track.
Here we zoom in on the Intuitive Machines IM-2 Athena landing site. Mons Mouton is a rolling hills kind of topography like Salisbury Plain where I grew up. The second map here shows that the landing site is quite smooth compared to areas around it. Some […]
[Original post on mastodon.social]
The Mahanti and Atwell sites were shown in 2 LPSC abstracts about IM-2. The Atwell site was the actual mission target. Four craters have letter designations, from maps shown on the company website (https://www.intuitivemachines.com/im-2 - see the Mission Press Kit.
Tomorrow we will take a […]
The map of Mons Mouton shows the VIPER rover target area, which I think is still the target of Astrobotic's Griffin lander at the end of this year. The PROSPECT area further north is a target for a future CLPS mission. PROSPECT is a European payload moved to CLPS from its original ride on […]
A map of Mons Mouton, a plateau 50 km across which was the landing target for Intuitive Machines IM-2 mission called Athena. The landing area was in the middle near 85 degrees south. This plateau was also the target for NASA's VIPER rover (currently in limbo) and will be the target for several future missions.
This is the target area for IM-2 Athena, a plateau called Mons Mouton, after an Apollo-era NASA mathematician. In older sources it is called Leibnitz Beta, a peak of the Leibnitz Mountains which were mapped by astronomers on the Moon's southern limb. The […]
[Original post on mastodon.social]
Hopping into a shaded crater floor comes with some risks... but a method of processing LRO 's high resolution (Narrow Angle) camera images developed by Valentin Bickel revealed some details on the crater floor, depressions and rocks. Two safer areas were suggested for Grace to land in. When the […]
This map shows the intended path of a small hopping or flying vehicle carried by Athena, when the landing site was supposed to be on the top of the ridge shown in the previous map. When the site changed a new route would be needed, but it has not yet been released. This map shows a short hop off the lander, then a 90 m flight to test systems, a 300 m flight for mapping the surface, a hop into a permanently shaded crater for data collection, and a hop out. The shaded crater floor had not been mapped but another study using reflected light identified what looked like two safe sites within it.
Athena was carrying several NASA payloads as well as one of the company's own hings, a small flying probe called Grace (after Grace Hopper - an important early computer programmer). Grace would hop off the lander on a short test flight, then make several hops […]
[Original post on mastodon.social]
The approximate impact site of India's Chandrayaan 1 Moon Impact Probe is shown. This was located by extrapolating from the images taken by MIP during descent. See all the crater names - they are unofficial, part of a set suggested by the LRO camera team - and some have changed since the time […]
A map of the Connecting Ridge or Shackleton-De Gerlache Ridge very close to the Moon's south pole. A landing site considered for Intuitive Machines mission 2 (Athena) is located in a small box on the ridge, a site with prolonged sunlight (i.e. more than half a lunar day). Also shown are the impact site of India's Chandrayaan 1 Moon Impact Probe and several informal names for craters.
The next lander mission and the most recent is Intuitive Machines mission 2, named Athena. I am starting with a look at the landing area considered for several years but changed in the year leading up to launch. This was on a very challenging target, the […]
[Original post on mastodon.social]
🚨I found the ill-fated @Int_Machines #IM2 #Athena lander using the #Chandrayaan2 OHRC and it shows some interesting patterns around the site where it hard landed. Exclusive story 👇 and I’ll share more detailed observations and my thoughts on this soon in my blog. (More pictures are storely below)
Image shows the landing attempt of the Intuitive Machines IM2 lander "Athena" at Mons Mouton , lunar south pole from the vantage point of the lander.
Via #IntuitiveMachines IM-2 achieved the southernmost lunar landing, proving our ability to communicate & operate in deep space.
Every challenge fuels our progress—we’re building humanity’s future in space & we’re just getting started. Read more: intuitivemachines.com/post/im-2-th...
#IM2 #Athena
Via #IntuitiveMachines: #IM2 The Southernmost Step in Human Experience www.intuitivemachines.com/post/im-2-th...
The tiny rover on board #IM2 Athena captured the broken leg of Athena (again!) and a mysterious debris off the lander. @yaoki_space has released the raw images - thanks!
here's the processed image.
#WhatYaokiSee
Credits: Daimon/C.Tungathurthi
🛰️🌑 La sonde LRO de la NASA, en orbite lunaire, a repéré #Athena #IM2 sur la #Lune, dans un cratère de 20 mètres de diamètre.
📷 Dans l'encadré un agrandissement de la vue
#IM2 - La sonde LRO a retrouvé Athena au fond de son cratère.
A more non-oblique look at #IM2 Athena. This view you can clearly see the shadow casted by Athena.
#IM2 achieved a lunar hole-in-one ⛳
