KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — Like a giant Roman candle, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket soared into the night sky on Wednesday, carrying Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 lunar lander.

Its destination is the moon, where NASA and the company hope the tools and experiments on board will find different forms of water on the lunar satellite.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket sent up the IM-2 mission from NASA's Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39A.

The launch took off at 7:16 p.m. ET.

However, after 43 minutes after the launch, the IM-2 team lost communications with the lunar lander called Athena after it was deployed from SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, according to NASA.

After attempting a power cycle for communications, the IM-2 was able to re-establish communications with Athena.

Learning more about the first-stage booster

This became the ninth mission for the Falcon 9's first-stage booster B1083. Its previous missions include two crewed launches:

1. Crew-8 launch
2. Polaris Dawn mission
3. Starlink 6-48 mission
4. Starlink 6-56 mission
5. CRS-31
6. Starlink 6-65 mission
7. Astranis
8. Starlink 13-1 mission

After the stage separation, the first-stage rocket booster landed on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas that was in the Atlantic Ocean.

About the mission to the moon

Known as the IM-2 mission, it is part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, which lets the U.S. space agency to work with companies to send technology and experiments to the moon’s surface.  

Intuitive Machines, based in Houston, Texas, plans to have its 14-foot (4.3-meter) tall Nova-C lunar lander to land on the moon on Thursday, March 6, for a 10-day mission.

In fact, if all goes well, it will land about 100 miles (161 kilometers) from the moon’s South Pole at a location known as Mons Mouton.   

Named after the Greek goddess Athena who was best known for her wisdom and warfare, this lunar lander has different experiments and tools onboard, such as NASA’s special drill.

One of the main aims for the mission is to use NASA’s Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain (TRIDENT) that will dig about 3 feet (1 meter) into the lunar surface and deposit samples on the surface for testing.

Then another tool, the Mass Spectrometer observing lunar operations (MSolo), will then be used to find any possible volatiles or gases.

These volatiles could be anything, such as trapped water ice, particles from an early atmosphere of the moon or just different gases.

This experiment using TRIDENT and MSolo is known as Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment 1 (PRIME-1).

Isabel King, a research robotics engineer at Honeybee Robotics that designed, built, tested and will run the drill, explained to Spectrum News how it will work.

It will drill down at nearly 4 inches (10 centimeters) at a time. The regolith, or lunar rock and soil, will be placed onto the surface where it will be studied and any volatile data to be collected, she said.

She shares more about the drill and how it will be used, how she had to go to the Arctic to test it and her thoughts about the drill’s place in history.

During its time on the moon, a solar eclipse will also occur, and additional data will be collected.

Some of the other payloads is the IM-2's Micro Nova Hopper. It will take short flights or hops to make its way to explore a small permanently shadowed crater about a quarter of a mile from the landing site. It is hoped to discover water ice.

Intuitive Machines’ CEO Stephen Altemus talked about the different pieces of equipment, or payloads, on Athena.

See the rest of the payloads for the IM-2 here.

NASA’s Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration, Science Mission Directorate Joel Kearns said, “it would be neat to discover ice on the moon” and he said testing out drills like the PRIME-1 are need so breakthroughs like that are made.

He also touched on the importance of any possible water, ice or volatiles that will be discovered.

IM-1’s first trip to the moon

This is not Intuitive Machines’ first space rodeo. Last year, it sent up its NOVA-C lander named Odysseus in what was deemed a “successful mission”. Intuitive Machines was the first private company in history to land on the moon.

But it did have a bit of bad luck as it was coming in for a landing. One of the NOVA-C lunar lander’s legs dug into the moon’s soil during the landing, which resulted in it tipping over.

It resulted in one of its legs breaking off.

However, all of its payloads were in operating order and were able to collect and transmit the data collected.

The mission only lasted six days before the extreme cold temperatures of the lunar night froze Odysseus.

Currently, Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander and Japanese company’s ispace’s HAKUTO-R lunar lander are currently heading to the moon.