New York, March 8 || The mission of US company Intuitive Machines' lunar lander Athena has come to an early end because the lander tipped over while touching down on the Moon, and its battery quickly drained, the company said.
According to NASA, the uncrewed lander landed at a region near the Moon's South Pole at about 11:30 a.m. Eastern Time Thursday, more than 400 meters from its intended landing site, news agency reported.
The mission, codenamed IM-2, landed closer to the lunar South Pole than any previous lander, said NASA.
Intuitive Machines said images collected later confirmed the lander was on its side, preventing it from fully operating NASA's lunar drill and other instruments before its batteries were depleted.
Among the data collected by the lander, NASA's PRIME-1 (Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment 1) suite, which includes the lunar drill known as TRIDENT (The Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain), successfully demonstrated the hardware's full range of motion in the harsh environment of space, NASA said.