Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 360 posts

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#31

Post by not2b »

ok_dad wrote: post #30
yieldcrv wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure senior leaders at NASA are reconsidering giving any new contracts to IM. at NASA, and DOGE, when they catch wind of it bagholders on reddit trying to understand the 50% drop have not been open to anything rational that explains the 50% drop so far I've gotten "You are blinded by dumb hate." for pointing out that $LUNR's unintuitive machines getting contracts from Nasa are their only business plan, as if th…

Shit, NASA does space stuff, it fails sometimes! Do we want to only fund things we know to be 100% easy to do? And don't fucking tell me, "we already landed on the moon once, how hard can it be?" because this shit is really fucking hard and takes lots of cash and a lot of what apppears to be "waste" or "failure" on a first order approximation, but in reality is actually "learned knowledge". I can't believe people thi…

They shouldn't just cancel, but with the same kind of failure twice in a row it seems they should require correcting the tipping-over issue before trying a third time.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#32

Post by joeevans1000 »

Liftyee wrote: post #29
joeevans1000 wrote: post #26

Not being critical here, just a question from my curious naivety (lunar exploration is hard): these landers seem spindly and unforgiving, landing-wise. Are there bouncy ball type craft that could be made, or something that can reorient or push itself up after landing? I have a vague memory of something like that being used on Mars.

There are indeed craft like that. The NASA Pathfinder probe and MER rovers (all to Mars) are probably what you're thinking of.

Ah, cool. I'll look those up. I just looked at the Athena and I'm tempted to armchair quarterback a tiny bit. I mean, that thing looks extremely top heavy. And it had hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment on it. I also wonder if these companies are patenting their approaches so that other companies can't use working solutions.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#33

Post by dr_orpheus »

joeevans1000 wrote: post #26

Not being critical here, just a question from my curious naivety (lunar exploration is hard): these landers seem spindly and unforgiving, landing-wise. Are there bouncy ball type craft that could be made, or something that can reorient or push itself up after landing? I have a vague memory of something like that being used on Mars.

Yep, most of the previous Mars rover prior to Curiosity did it this way. They had a number of balloons surrounding the rover and landed and bounced along the surface. Then the balloons were deflated in a particular order so the rover ended up the right way up. But for these there was some atmosphere to slow the descent with a parachute and balloons. But for landing on the moon you need the thrusters to slow you down for landing so it can't just be balloons on either side. Presumably you could still use something to slow you down that isn't part of the science mission for the lander that gets ejected right before landing an then let the balloons hit the surface and drop down. But now there are multiple mechanisms and things to do the landing which means more money.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSbAUtyO7xo

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#34

Post by dr_orpheus »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #11
nine_k wrote: post #2

One similarly structured craft (thin and tall) reached the Moon a year ago, and also eventually toppled. Maybe next missions will feature less tower-shaped designs and more crab-shaped designs, at least during the landing phase.

The craft that tipped over last year (Odysseus) was also made by Intuitive Machines (IM). Firefly's Blue Ghost landed on the moon last week without tipping over, proving that a modern commercial company can do it. Kind of embarrassing for IM which is 0 for 2. I'm sure there are all kinds of reasons/excuses for why IM's landers fell over and I'm sure their mission profiles are different from Firefly's, but from a high…

Yeah, was cool to see Blue Ghost be successful. And do the point about tall and thin, the Blue Ghost lander is much more squat than the Intuitive Machines landers

https://fireflyspace.com/blue-ghost/

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#35

Post by [deleted] »

joeevans1000 wrote: post #26

Not being critical here, just a question from my curious naivety (lunar exploration is hard): these landers seem spindly and unforgiving, landing-wise. Are there bouncy ball type craft that could be made, or something that can reorient or push itself up after landing? I have a vague memory of something like that being used on Mars.

[deleted]

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#36

Post by olex »

mikeyouse wrote: post #13

Kind of passed over in the discussion of the science and toppling - but did they give any idea why it landed 250 miles from its intended landing site? Seems like a really large error?

According to IM's website, it landed within 250 _meters_ of the intended site - could there be a unit confusion (m / mi) somewhere in the press chain?

https://www.intuitivemachines.com/im-2

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#37

Post by temp0826 »

not2b wrote: post #31
ok_dad wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shit, NASA does space stuff, it fails sometimes! Do we want to only fund things we know to be 100% easy to do? And don't fucking tell me, "we already landed on the moon once, how hard can it be?" because this shit is really fucking hard and takes lots of cash and a lot of what apppears to be "waste" or "failure" on a first order approximation, but in reality is actually "learned knowledge". I can't believe people thi…

They shouldn't just cancel, but with the same kind of failure twice in a row it seems they should require correcting the tipping-over issue before trying a third time.

They should ask the moon for a refund, or at least a "thank you".

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#38

Post by kccqzy »

mikeyouse wrote: post #13

Kind of passed over in the discussion of the science and toppling - but did they give any idea why it landed 250 miles from its intended landing site? Seems like a really large error?

250 miles? The mission official website of Intuitive Machines says 250 meters. From https://www.intuitivemachines.com/im-2

> HOUSTON, TX – March 7, 2025 – Intuitive Machines, Inc. (Nasdaq: LUNR, LUNRW) (“Intuitive Machines”) (“Company”), a leading space exploration, infrastructure, and services company, has announced the IM-2 mission lunar lander, Athena, landed 250 meters from its intended landing site in the Mons Mouton region of the lunar south pole, inside of a crater.

It's also somewhat funny that this mission update is written in the style of a press releases, mentioning that stock ticker and an obligatory paragraph about forward-looking statements, whereas others are just a normal update.

Re: Athena spacecraft declared dead after toppling over on moon

#40

Post by throwup238 »

rolph wrote: post #27
aylmao wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could be two landers, one stacked on top of the other for takeoff, but separate for landing EDIT: or a horizontal lander, packed on it's side for takeoff. I'm sure it's more complicated than that, but landing something this tall seems quite complicated too in the first place.

go bigger this could be a pancake stack that separates into a swarm of puck like units according to some sequence

You’d be paying the extra mass cost of landing gears for each pancake - something has to absorb the impact of landing or they’ll just break apart. These landers already operate at the margin.
Post reply on HN