Watch Live as Intuitive Machines Tries to Land on the Moon for the Second Time

After becoming the first private company to touch down on the lunar surface last year, Intuitive Machines is gearing up for a second Moon landing near the satellite’s south pole. Hopefully this time, the lander will stay upright.

Intuitive Machines is targeting a landing opportunity on Thursday at 12:32 p.m. ET. The company’s Nova-C lunar lander, named Athena, will aim to touch down in Mons Mouton, a lunar plateau near the Moon’s south pole. Athena was built by Intuitive Machines for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. The landing attempt will be streamed live on Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 mission page and on NASA+. You can also (conveniently!) watch the attempt on the video feed below. The live stream is set to begin at 11:30 a.m. ET.

Athena launched February 26 on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The lander is packed with NASA science instruments and tools to search for resources on the Moon and prepare for a sustainable human presence on the lunar surface, according to the space agency.

Among the NASA instruments are the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1, or PRIME-1, which comprises a drill and mass spectrometer to explore the Moon’s subsurface for traces of water ice. The lander is also carrying Grace, a Micro-Nova robot, which is designed to hop in and out of nearby craters on the Moon.

Athena is also delivering the Nokia Lunar Surface Communications System, a cellular communication network designed to connect the lander with a Lunar Outpost rover and the Micro Nova hopper.

The mission entered lunar orbit on Monday, completing an orbit around the Moon every two hours as it waited for the Sun to rise on the landing site to power Athena’s surface operations. To touch down on the Moon, Athena will need to perform a descent trajectory burn to lower its orbit and place it on a flight path toward the landing site. From there, the robot is on its own, flying autonomously all the way down to the lunar surface.

Houston-based Intuitive Machines has been here before. The company launched its first lunar lander, named Odysseus, in February 2024. The two landers derive their names from Greek mythology, Athena being Odysseus’ divine patron. Odysseus managed to reach the lunar surface, but its landing wasn’t so smooth. One of the lander’s legs may have gotten caught during its descent, causing it to tip over on its side and end up lying sideways on a rock.

It may not have been perfect, but Intuitive Machines still made history with its clumsy landing and ushered in a new era of commercial deliveries to the Moon. Another Texas startup, Firefly Aerospace, landed on the Moon this past weekend on its first attempt. Firefly’s Blue Ghost mission, aptly named “Ghost Riders in the Sky” and also part of NASA’s CLPS program, pulled off a soft touchdown on the Moon on Sunday at 3:34 a.m. ET. But that’s not all: Another private lander, the Japanese company ispace’s Resilience lander, hitched a ride on the same SpaceX rocket that launched Blue Ghost to the Moon. Resilience carried out a flyby of the Moon on February 15 and is expected to touch down in April.

The flurry of commercial spaceflight activity is a preamble to NASA’s Artemis missions, which aim to send a crewed mission to the Moon beginning next year. The lunar surface is already a busy place, but with a semi-permanent human presence on the horizon, Intuitive Machines’ work is just the beginning.