SpaceX Launches Private Moon Lander and NASA’s Trailblazer to Hunt for Lunar Water

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket soared into the evening sky today (Feb. 26), carrying an ambitious payload that marks another milestone in lunar exploration. The mission, launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, includes Athena, a moon lander built by Intuitive Machines, and NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer orbiter, both set to probe the lunar surface for water ice—a critical resource for future space missions.

Athena, part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, carries 10 NASA instruments designed to detect and analyze water ice deposits near the moon’s south pole. It will be joined by Lunar Trailblazer, an orbiter that will map water ice from a higher altitude, complementing Athena’s surface-level data. NASA sees this as a crucial step in the Artemis program’s goal of establishing a long-term human presence on the moon.

The Falcon 9 lifted off at 7:16 p.m. EST (0017 GMT on Feb. 27), and minutes later, its reusable first-stage booster landed successfully on the SpaceX droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas, marking the ninth flight for this booster. About 43.5 minutes after liftoff, Athena was deployed into a translunar orbit, followed by Lunar Trailblazer.

Athena’s mission, IM-2, follows Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 lander, Odysseus, which made history in 2024 as the first privately-built spacecraft to achieve a soft landing on the moon, despite tipping over upon touchdown. This time, engineers hope for a more precise landing in the Mons Mouton region, where water ice is believed to be abundant. If all goes according to plan, Athena will reach lunar orbit within days and land shortly after, operating on the surface for about 10 Earth days.

A key component of IM-2 is the PRIME-1 experiment, which includes the TRIDENT drill and MSolo spectrometer. These instruments will extract and analyze lunar samples for signs of water and carbon dioxide. To further explore the landing site, Athena is carrying two secondary vehicles: MAPP, a rover designed by Lunar Outpost, and Grace, a “hopper” robot that will leap across the lunar surface to explore shadowed craters inaccessible to wheeled rovers. MAPP will also test Nokia’s Lunar Surface Communications System (LSCS), the first 4G network on the moon.

Lunar Trailblazer, meanwhile, will map lunar water deposits from orbit, providing crucial data for future lunar missions. The mission’s cost, initially $47 million, increased to $62.5 million as NASA expanded its requirements, including new temperature data collection from Athena.

This launch also carried additional payloads, including Odin, an asteroid-mining spacecraft by Astroforge, and CHIMERA GEO 1, an orbital transfer vehicle from Epic Aerospace. Athena and Lunar Trailblazer are part of a busy 2025 lunar exploration schedule, following Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost mission and Japan-based ispace’s Resilience lander, both launched earlier this year.

With this latest mission, SpaceX and Intuitive Machines continue to push the boundaries of commercial lunar exploration, bringing humanity one step closer to sustainable operations on the moon and, eventually, Mars.