A small but rugged robotic moon rover developed by a Colorado company became the first commercial exploration vehicle to touch down on the lunar surface on Thursday.
Mission managers were unable to immediately confirm that the landing of the spacecraft it was traveling in had been fully successful.
The Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (Mapp) built by Lunar Outpost, a space technology start-up with about 200 employees, landed near the moon’s south pole at 12.31pmET on Thursday after an eight-day journey from Earth.
It was carried aboard the Athena lander launched by Texas-based Intuitive Machines (IM), which itself became the first private company to make a successful moon touchdown in February 2024. On that occasion the IM spacecraft Odysseus toppled over at landing, forcing a premature end to its mission.
Mission director Tim Crain, senior vice-president of IM, confirmed on Thursday that Athena had landed, and was sending signals to Earth. But he said early information suggested not everything was working as expected.
A livestream of the landing event ended with no confirmation of the spacecraft’s status, and Crain said engineers at IM’s Houston headquarters were analyzing data and expected to give a full update at an afternoon press conference scheduled for 4pm ET.
“Team, keep working the problem,” Crain told engineers at mission control. “We are working to evaluate exactly what our orientation is on the surface.”
Despite the uncertainty of its initial condition, Athena’s arrival was the second private moon landing in four days after Sunday’s spectacular arrival of Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost.
If Mapp is confirmed to have arrived intact, the tiny rover will take an outsized role on the path to the first human lunar landing in more than half a century.
Barely 1.5ft (45cm) in length, the fully autonomous, four-wheel drive vehicle is the first US-built rover to land there since Nasa’s lunar roving vehicle (LRV), used during the space agency’s final three crewed Apollo missions before the program ended in 1972.
During a 14-day surface exploration, Mapp is programmed to examine previously inaccessible areas of the moon close to its landing site near Mons Mouton, in the lunar south pole region where astronauts from Nasa’s Artemis 3 are scheduled to arrive in mid-2027.
Among the objectives are pioneering developments in lunar communications and navigation systems that will help Artemis mission managers better prepare for the first human lunar landing since Apollo 17 in December 1972.
Firsts for the mission, also known as Lunar Voyage 1, include the first cellphone call from the moon using onboard antennas supplied by Nokia, and the “sale” to Nasa for a symbolic $1 of a small sample of rocky lunar regolith.
The transaction, which will mark the first time a section of a planetary body has changed hands for money, is intended to set an important legal precedent for future space commerce, according to Justin Cyrus, chief executive of Lunar Outpost.
“Lunar Voyage 1 is not just about exploration, it’s about proving that private industry can operate, sustain, and create economic value on the moon,” he said ahead of the mission’s 26 February launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
“These historic accomplishments create real-world lunar infrastructure, resource utilization and planetary mobility, essential steps toward a lasting human presence beyond Earth.”
Mapp is solar powered, with a lifespan of a single lunar day, or 14 Earth days. Among its packed payload is AstroAnt, a tiny, robotic device developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that will take temperature readings from Mapp’s roof, and which is designed to eventually assist in diagnostic and repair tasks for spacecraft during lunar missions.
A second small lunar rover, built by the Japanese company Dymon, is also aboard; as well as non-scientific contents, including a list of names from the Italian soccer club Juventus.
A successful landing of Athena, meanwhile, would represent redemption for Intuitive Machines, whose celebration following the 2024 landing of its Odysseus spacecraft was quickly dampened when it became apparent it had toppled over at touchdown, forcing a premature halt to its mission after just five days.
Intuitive Machine and Lunar Outpost were among the recipients of Nasa “seed money” announced last year for private companies to develop mobility solutions for astronauts on Artemis missions.
Overall, however, Nasa’s moon missions face an uncertain future with speculation that its own Space Launch System rocket program could be canceled in favor of heavy lift Starship rockets developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company; and the reported laying off of 10% of the space agency’s workforce through Trump administration cuts ordered by Musk’s department of government efficiency (Doge).
