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The image above was sent by the Athena Machines lunar module before running out of energy. Like his predecessor, he was horizontal, which prevented him from deploying his loads. To top it off, he did it in an orientation and an orography that did not allow him to recharge his batteries.
Athena (IM-2) is one of the many Missions of the NASA Commercial Lunar Payload (Clps) Commercial Program. Announced in 2018, It is the return of the United States to the lunar surface after more than 50 yearssince NASA stopped doing lunar missions (manned or not) after Apollo 17.
CLPS hires private companies to transport NASA scientific experiments To the moon. These companies develop commercial spaces that finance with NASA contracts and other agencies or companies interested in sending load to the Moon. For NASA it is a very low cost approach, since the contracts revolve around 100 million dollars per mission, while the alunizas of the Surveyor program of the 1960s cost 10 times more (adjusting their value from then on inflation).
It is also a high -risk approach, how they are demonstrating the first results. NASA pays the agreed amount and does not cover cost overruns, transferring to companies a huge technical and financial challenge. For NASA a failure represents a manageable loss, so it is bombing the moon of CLPS missions. For companies, the pressure is increasing.
A difficult beginning
The CLPS missions had to start launching in 2020. The Orbitbeyond company canceled its contract in 2019 for financial problems, renouncing before starting. Masten Space, another selected, broke in 2022, canceling his mission planned by 2023. Astrobotic, Firefly Aerospace and Intuitive Machines ended up delaying their releases, but they are still in the race. However, of the four CLPS missions launched to date, only one has achieved a completely successful moon landing:
❌ Astrobotic pilgrim. The first CLPS mission. He received NASA 79.5 million dollars to transport 14 useful charges to the Moon. It was launched on January 8, 2024 with a Vulcan Centaur rocket of Ula. The ship suffered a propellant leak shortly after the launch that left it without possibilities to reach the lunar surface. He went down in history as First American attempt of moon landing from the Apollo missions, but the fuel escape left it unusable. First failure.
❌ Odysseus of intuitive machines. The IM-1 mission received 77.5 million dollars from NASA to send six scientific instruments to the moon. It was launched on February 15, 2024 aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from Spacex. Unlike pilgrim, the Nova-C ship “Odysseus” reached the lunar surface, But it was sidewayswhich prevented deploying many of its useful charges. Even so, it continued to work for seven days before running out of energy.
✔️ Blue Ghost of Firefly Aerospace. The mission received a contract of 101.5 million from the NASA to take 10 useful charges to the moon. It was launched on January 15, 2025 in a Falcon 9 rocket in Spacex. The ship alunicized smoothly and vertically on March 2, 2025. It was the first completely successful mooning of a private company on the moon. Among other instruments, the mission deployed a heat probe under the lunar regol.
❌ Athena of intuitive machines. The second mission of Intuitive Machines received 47 million dollars from NASA to display the prime-1 ice prospecting experiment on the moon. It was launched on February 27, 2025 in a Falcon 9 rocket. Like Odysseus, the Athena ship managed to descend to the Mons Mouton region, near the South Lunar Pole, but it was left aside again due to problems with its navigation sensors. Consequently, he could not recharge his batteries and died prematurely after transmitting images and some initial data.
The NASA trailblazer lunar orbiter ran the same fate launched next to Athena as part of another agency’s low cost program: the Simplex missions. NASA lost contact with the orbiter shortly after its deployment. Its predecessor, the Cubesat Lunah-Map launched next to the Lunar Artemis I mission, also ended in failure due to a propulsion failure.
Another moment that dazzled the Clps missions was the cancellation of the Viper Rover when it was already built. NASA’s rover, designed to search water in the South Lunar Pole, was going to be launched with the Astrobotic Griffin module, but was canceled by NASA so as not to have to take delays and cost overheads. Of course, instead of dismantling it, the agency has ended up making it available to private companies interested in operating it.
The following to try
- Astrobotic, with the Lunar Griffin module, scheduled for the end of this year
- Intuitive Machines, with the IM-4 missions (which will take the prospect drill of the European Space Agency to the South Lunar Pole) and IM-3 (which will travel to an enigmatic lunar swirl, Reiner Gamma), in 2026
- Firefly Aerospace, with the Blue Ghost 2 missions, next year, and Blue Ghost 3, in 2028 (using an orbiter and a landing module to investigate the Gruithuisen domes, a lunar territory never explored)
- And Draper, aboard the Apex module of the Japanese company Ispace, with the aim of alunizar on the hidden face of the moon
The half full glass
Image: Firefly Aerospace
Despite these setbacks, each ship of the Clps program has helped the development of the companies involved. Although the scientific value of these missions is much lower than that of more advanced programs, such as those of the Chinese space agency, CLPS offers NASA a more economical and flexible path to explore the moon and start energizing a lunar economy.
The program has had a difficult start (after all they were high -risk missions), but has fulfilled the objective of involving private industry in lunar exploration, lowering access to the moon and delivering some scientific results to a comparatively low cost. If the next missions manage to improve the success rate, CLPS will be the scientific support that the artemis man -manned program needs.
Image | Intuitive machines
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