Intuitive Machines introduced on Friday morning that its Athena mission to the floor of the Moon, which landed on its aspect, has ended.

“With the route of the Solar, the orientation of the photo voltaic panels, and excessive chilly temperatures within the crater, Intuitive Machines doesn’t count on Athena to recharge,” the company said in an announcement. “The mission has concluded and groups are persevering with to evaluate the info collected all through the mission.”

Athena, a commercially developed lander, touched down on the lunar floor on Thursday at 11:28 am native time in Houston (17:28 UTC). The probe landed inside 250 meters of its focused touchdown website within the Mons Mouton area of the Moon. That is the southernmost location that any probe has landed on the Moon, inside just a few levels of the lunar south pole.

Déjà vu for IM-2

This marked the Houston-based firm’s second lunar mission. The primary one, a bit of greater than a yr in the past, suffered an issue with its laser rangefinders previous to touchdown. Though it touched down softly, this primary lander reached the Moon going barely quicker than meant—and in a location with a steeper slope. It broke a touchdown leg and toppled over. Nonetheless, even on this configuration, the Odysseus mission was capable of generate energy and full a good portion of its scientific goals over the course of every week of exercise on the Moon.

Intuitive Machines has not but mentioned exactly what occurred in Athena‘s remaining moments earlier than it reached the Moon on Thursday. Nonetheless, in a information convention on Thursday afternoon, company officials confirmed that they’d skilled one other downside with the laser rangefinders. This prompted the spacecraft to, once more, not know exactly the place it was relative to the floor of the Moon, or how excessive.

The Athena mission was funded in vital half by NASA. The house company has begun to rent business firms like Intuitive Machines to ship scientific experiments to the lunar floor because it gears up for a human exploration program close to the South Pole of the Moon.