For the second time in less than a week, an uncrewed American lunar lander has touched down on the surface of Earth’s celestial neighbor as NASA races to get humans back to the moon in the years ahead.

But it remains unclear just exactly what state Intuitive Machines’ Athena spacecraft is in after it landed Thursday on the surface of the moon to begin about a 10-day water-hunting and research mission on the lunar south pole. The touch down followed an eight-day journey that began when the six-legged lunar lander launched Feb. 26 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that propelled it into orbit.

Athena, which is on a $62.5 million mission for NASA known as IM-2, is now the second spacecraft manufactured by Intuitive Machines to make it to the lunar surface.

The aerospace company, based in Houston Texas, previously etched its name in the history books in February 2024 when its spacecraft, Odysseus, became the first commercially-built lunar lander to make it to the moon. The lunar mission also marked the United States’ return to the moon for the first time in more than five decades since NASA’s Apollo era came to an end.

The landing marks a historic moment when two lunar landers manufactured by seperate companies could be operating on the moon’s surface at the same time. On Sunday, Firefly Aerospace, also based in Texas, landed its own spacecraft, Blue Ghost on the moon’s Earth-facing side.

The work ahead for both landers is vital, according to NASA, which aims under its Artemis program to use a slate of uncrewed lunar missions to lay the foundation for a permanent lunar settlement when humans return as early as 2027. Ahead of those crewed lunar landings? America’s next giant leap: sending the first astronauts to Mars potentially in the 2030s.

Lunar landing: Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander makes it to the moon

Intuitive Machines’ Athena lander makes it to moon

Athena’s landing around 12:30 p.m. EST remains marked by uncertainty. While mission controllers have confirmed the spacecraft did not crash on its way to the surface, they continued to work to understand its condition as Intuitive Machines and NASA abruptly ended a joint livestream.

However, the lander was generating power and transmitting data back to Earth, including a few photos of its descent. When the broadcast ended on the cliffhanger, Tim Crain, the chief technology officer at Intuitive Machines, was working to get a photo of the spacecraft on the ground to determine how it had landed.

Further updates may come from the company’s X account or a news conference scheduled for 4 p.m. EST.

“Athena is on the surface of the moon,” Intuitive Machines’ Josh Marshall said during the livestream. “We are communicating with the vehicle.”

The touchdown comes after the spacecraft, part of a class of lunar landers known as Nova-C, entered the moon’s orbit Monday just days after launching on and separating from the Falcon 9 rocket to begin its independent voyage. Since entering lunar orbit, the solar-powered lander has been circling the moon once about every two hours while waiting for the sun to rise on the permanently-shadowed south pole to to power surface operations.

Athena then completed a maneuver at 5:33 a.m. Thursday to position itself as close to the surface as possible, about 62 miles above, to attempt a descent.

The landing site near a plateau known as Mons Mouton is even further south than Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander reached more than a year ago, according to the company. The crater-ridden region is one of nine possible lunar landing sites identified by NASA for its crewed Artemis III lunar mission.

The mesa-like lunar mountain towers over a landscape carved by craters, including the Shackleton Crater – a cold, dark region where water ice and other volatile materials that turn easily into gas are thought to be abundant.

What’s next for the IM-2 mission?

As the mission name suggests, IM-2 is the second mission NASA hired Intuitive Machines to carry out following IM-1 in 2024.

The mission is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, or CLPS, which the U.S. space agency implemented to find lower-cost methods to finance privately-managed lunar deliveries without having to develop spacecraft of its own.

Expectations have been high for Intuitive Machines to pull off a second landing after Odysseus made it to the moon last February, though the lander tipped over when it touched down. But landing Athena on the moon’s south pole is just the first step in its mission.

Aboard the lunar lander is a fleet of technology that NASA and other private companies paid to have delivered to and deployed on the moon. Those scientific instruments would next be put to use, doing everything from hunting for water beneath the surface to testing Nokia’s high-speed, long-range communications systems.

The main experiment onboard Athena is NASA’s PRIME-1 (Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1,) which will search for resources like water in the lunar soil that could be extracted and used by future explorers to produce fuel or breathable oxygen.

Also on board are several small vehicles that will expand the area capable of being explored during the mission. That includes Intuitive Machine’s propulsive drone known as the Micro Nova Hopper, which can hop across the lunar surface, and the first-ever commercial rover to land on the moon, the MAPP rover (Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform) manufactured by a Colorado company named Lunar Outpost.

Additionally, an instrument known as a laser retroreflector array (LRA) on the top deck of the lander will be able to bounce laser light back at any incoming spacecraft – a vital capability to determine the locations of lunar landers more accurately.

What’s on board Athena? Intuitive Machines’ spacecraft is packed and ready to explore the moon

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lands Sunday

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost spacecraft took a much longer route to make it Sunday to the moon after lifting off Jan. 15 from the same launch site and atop the same model of rocket.

Blue Ghost’s landing site is near a volcanic feature called Mons Latreille on the moon’s Earth-facing side. The region is located within Mare Crisium, a 300-mile-wide basin on the moon’s near side, that is believed to have been created by early volcanic eruptions and flooded with basaltic lava more than 3 billion years ago.

Now that it’s on the surface, the lander has commenced its $101.5 million mission of deploying a fleet of 10 NASA science instruments to test the lunar environment. The technology will next be put to use for a complete lunar day, equivalent to about 14 Earth days.

Both the Blue Ghost and Athena landers will also be able to document a total lunar eclipse, which will be visible March 13-14 across the United States and the rest of North America.

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]