SpaceX has successfully launched Intuitive Machines’ Athena lander toward the moon in the IM-2 mission. Athena is scheduled to reach the lunar surface on Thursday, March 6.
A Falcon 9 rocket carrying the uncrewed lunar lander lifted off from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 7:16 p.m. ET on Wednesday, Febraury 26.
Liftoff of IM-2! pic.twitter.com/iJ3BCekqJs
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 27, 2025
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As usual, about eight minutes after launch, SpaceX brought home the Falcon 9’s first stage, landing it on a droneship stationed off the coast of Florida. This was the ninth flight of the first-stage Falcon 9 booster supporting this mission, which previously launched Crew-8, Polaris Dawn, CRS-31, Astranis: From One to Many, and four Starlink missions.
Falcon 9 landing confirmed, marking the 100th time a first stage booster has landed on the A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship pic.twitter.com/wMU2XDct5r
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 27, 2025
The launch means that for the first time there are three separate missions heading to the moon simultaneously, setting a new record for concurrent lunar expeditions. The other two are Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost mission, which launched on January 15 and is expected to reach the lunar surface on March 2, and Resilience, launched by Japan’s ispace on January 15. This mission is taking a longer route and is set to reach the moon in May.
IM-2’s Athena lander is now on an eight-day journey to the moon’s South Pole, where it will aim to demonstrate lunar mobility, resource prospecting, and analysis of volatile substances from subsurface materials, an endeavor described by Intuitive Machines as “a critical step toward uncovering water sources beyond Earth — a key component for establishing sustainable infrastructure both on the lunar surface and in space.”
This is the second lunar mission conducted by Texas-based Intuitive Machines. Its first effort launched on February 15, 2024, reaching the lunar surface a week later on February 22. The lander achieved a successful soft landing, but it touched down slightly off-target and at an angle. Still, the payloads were able to be deployed, and lunar operations lasted 144 hours. IM-1 marked the first U.S. soft lunar landing since Apollo 17 in 1972.