When the IM-2 lunar mission landed on the surface of the moon in March, it was in an off-nominal position (on its side). In SpaceNews, senior writer Jeff Foust looks at how the companies, organizations, and researchers who had payloads on the mission made the most of the opportunity, despite the difficulties. IM-2 carried three payloads developed by Media Lab researchers and collaborators, in a cross-MIT collaboration led by the Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) and developed with MIT AeroAstro and MIT.nano.

By Jeff Foust

Companies and organizations can spend years developing experiments and other payloads for a space mission. Those payloads are then subjected to risks beyond the control of their owners. A launch failure or a satellite anomaly means all that effort was for naught.

The same can be true for a landing on the moon, as customers on Intuitive Machines’ second lunar lander mission, IM-2, discovered. That lander fell on its side, similar to what happened a year earlier on IM-1. The payloads on IM-2 operated briefly before low power levels led Intuitive Machines to end the mission barely 12 hours after touchdown.

NASA was the biggest customer on IM-2, but the lander carried payloads for several others, including Colorado startup Lunar Outpost. It hoped to deploy the Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform or MAPP, a 10-kilogram rover with its own set of payloads.