{"id":21444,"date":"2025-03-11T18:06:37","date_gmt":"2025-03-11T10:06:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/last-week-saw-two-very-different-moon-landings\/"},"modified":"2025-03-11T18:06:37","modified_gmt":"2025-03-11T10:06:37","slug":"last-week-saw-two-very-different-moon-landings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/last-week-saw-two-very-different-moon-landings\/","title":{"rendered":"Last week saw two very different Moon landings"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"img-border featured-image\">\n<p>\t<img width=\"100%\" src=\"https:\/\/spaceexplored.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2025\/03\/Untitled-1.jpg?quality=82&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1600\" class=\"skip-lazy wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/spaceexplored.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2025\/03\/Untitled-1.jpg?w=320&amp;quality=82&amp;strip=all&amp;ssl=1 320w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/spaceexplored.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2025\/03\/Untitled-1.jpg?w=640&amp;quality=82&amp;strip=all&amp;ssl=1 640w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/spaceexplored.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2025\/03\/Untitled-1.jpg?w=1024&amp;quality=82&amp;strip=all&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/spaceexplored.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2025\/03\/Untitled-1.jpg?w=1500&amp;quality=82&amp;strip=all&amp;ssl=1 1500w\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\" data-attachment-id=\"42963\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/spaceexplored.com\/2025\/03\/10\/last-week-saw-two-very-different-moon-landings\/untitled-1-28\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/spaceexplored.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2025\/03\/Untitled-1.jpg?quality=82&amp;strip=all\" data-orig-size=\"2000,1000\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-title=\"Firefly-IM-Landings\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\n\n<p>Images: Firefly &amp;#038; Intuitive Machines<\/p>\n<p>&#8221; data-large-file=&#8221;https:\/\/spaceexplored.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2025\/03\/Untitled-1.jpg?quality=82&amp;strip=all&amp;w=1024&#8243;><figcaption>\n\t\t\t\tImages: Firefly &amp; Intuitive Machines\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Last week was a big week for NASA\u2019s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program as it saw two landings by two different companies. The hope was that the agency would end up with two successful providers of NASA science to the Moon\u2019s surface; instead, it saw one, with the other falling over once again.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"more-42962\"><\/span><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-firefly-s-near-perfect-landing\">Firefly\u2019s near perfect landing<\/h2>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On March 2, Firefly successfully touched down on the Moon on its first attempt. This started the week off on a high note, with the company overcoming the odds of failing on its first landing attempt, as we\u2019ve seen so many times. While the company took the longest to get its Blue Ghost lander ready, it has seemingly paid off, as it looks to be the only one that can actually do it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This marked Firefly as the first US company from NASA\u2019s CLPS program to complete a soft landing on the Moon \u2013 which also makes it the first US company to land on the Moon as well.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The short and wide lander carried with it ten science payloads from NASA, eight of which have already begun gathering data.<\/p>\n<p>\t<span class=\"outbrain-ad-label\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\t\t<script type=\"text\/plain\">\n\t\t\twindow.adSlotsConfig = window.adSlotsConfig || [];<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\tadSlotsConfig.push( {\n\t\t\t\tslotID: '\/1049447\/Outbrain',\n\t\t\t\tslotName: 'div-gpt-ad-outbrain-ad-42962',\n\t\t\t\tsizes: [300, 250],\n\t\t\t\tslotPosition: 'mid_article'\n\t\t\t} );\n\t\t<\/script><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Not to show off, Firefly shared a dramatic compilation of the final stages of landing onto Mare Crisium, in the northern portion of the Moon\u2019s \u201cnear side.\u201d The video ends with a dramatic silhouette of the landing, reminiscent of an image captured on Apollo 11.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-intuitive-machines-sideways-again\">Intuitive Machines, sideways\u2026 again?<\/h2>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On Thursday, March 6 <em>(my birthday)<\/em>, Intuitive Machines was due for its lunar landing attempt. Its IM-2 lander, named Athena, sadly did not stick its landing. Similar to IM-1, the lander ended up on its side. Given the much taller and skinnier base compared to Blue Ghost, it led to some rather humorous \u201cI play Kerbal Space Program, so I\u2019m smarter than you\u201d comments on social media.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For what it is worth, it appears that Athena\u2019s lander was much softer than the company\u2019s first attempt as there\u2019s no mention of broken landing legs. However, the argument of this being another \u201csoft\u201d landing by the company would be incorrect. However, Intuitive Machines has done twice what others haven\u2019t been able to do once: land and operate a spacecraft on the Moon\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sadly, Athena\u2019s operations on the lunar surface were short-lived. Due to its location in a crater on the lunar surface, Intuitive Machines determined it would not be able to recharge the lander\u2019s batteries. While some payload operations were completed, millions of dollars\u2019 worth of potential science data were not collected.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Athena\u2019s mission ended on Friday, March 7, on its side and in a shadow, with a view of Earth between two of its landing legs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21444"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21444\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}