The American module Athena flies to the moon and is supposed to land on Mons Mouton.
The Falcon 9 rocket of SpaceX billionaire Elon Muska brought two robotic landing modules into space on Thursday night – one of the United States and the other from Japan. The start took place on Wednesday at 7:16 pm. Local Time (Thursday at 1:16 am CET) from Cape Canaveral, Florida, informs TASR on the basis of a report by DPA and TV CNN.
The American Athena module 4.3 meters high with a diameter of 1.6 meters will fly to a month for about a week, and first March will land on Mons Mouton in the South Pole area. His mission called IM-2 will take about ten days.
Among other things, the module is equipped with a prime-1 drill, designed to penetrate up to one meter below the monthly surface, as well as a mass spectrometer that can detect volatile substances.
From the Athena module, the Grace named after landing will be disconnected after the late pioneer of the software engineering Grace Murray Hopper, which takes detailed images of the monthly surface. They will do it over several jumps that reach a height of up to 50 meters. Later he ends up in a nearby crater, which is in a permanent shade.
Athena will also transport the MAPP (Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform) to Lunar Outpost and the two -wheeled YAOKI developed by the Japanese company Dymon.
Mission IM-2 is part of the NASA CLPS program
A number of companies and organizations are involved in the IM-2 mission. It is part of the American National Aviation and Space Authority (NASA) program called Commercial Lunar Payload Services (commercial lunar freight services, CLPS) to ensure cheap transportation of the Moon’s surface cost to support Artemis. NASA allocates individual missions to private companies that provide a complete service for it. NASA only delivers scientific equipment and a commercial partner is responsible for the rest of the mission.
The Athena module was developed by the American company Intuitive Machines, whose module Odysseus 22 February 2024 successfully landed on the Moon. It was the first American module to have been for a month in more than 50 years. He overturned during landing, but he sent the data to the ground.
The Blue Ghost Ghost Firefly Aerospace, Blue Ghost, will arrive at the month. In April it will be explored by the RESILIENCE module from the Japanese start-up ispace.
