Its been a year since Intuitive Machines (IM) made history with the first private soft landing and first American spacecraft since the Apollo program to land on the moon, after a nail-biting descent that came perilously close to failing. But this time around, theyre veterans. As they ready their second mission, IM-2, with an updated lunar lander named Athena, the vibe at the startups Houston headquarters is decidedly more relaxed and confident.Weve made 85 improvements to the vehicle and the process used for building and flying it, says Trent Martin, IMs senior VP of space systems. That includes 10 for landing and determining its location in space, which we struggled with during the first mission. Were not nearly spending as many late nights as we did getting ready for IM-1.Not that they dont still worry. This is space flight, he says. And space flight is hard.Athena is slated to lift off from Kennedy Space Center atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 at 7:17 p.m. ET on February 26 for a 10-day mission at the Mons Mouton plateau near the lunar south pole. (Click here for ways to watch.) Athena, a 14-foot hexagonal cylinder on six landing legs, will shuttle several NASA and commercial payloads to the lunar surface to test exploration vehicles and the first communications network on the moon; drill and analyze samples of lunar soil (called regolith); and map precious resources, like water ice.The roughly $100 million mission turned a 10% profit, thanks to funding from NASAs Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program and Tipping Point Initiative, commercial payloads, and three additional rideshares for satellites that will deploy to other destinations after Athena detaches from the rocket post-launch. Most are to support NASAs Artemis mission to establish sustainable infrastructure on the moon and in space, rather than rely solely on Earth for materials. In situ resources like oxygen and helium-3 can be used to make rocket fuel, water, and energy, while water can also make fuel and be a source for astronauts. Water is a building block for just about every chemical process that we would like to use on the moon, says Martin.[Image: Intuitive Machines]Athena is an upgrade from IMs first lander, Odysseus, and part of its methalox-propelled Nova-C class of landers. Odysseus might have crashed were it not for some lightning engineering. A missed safety switch prevented the landers altimeter lasers from firing to the surface to gauge its altitude and descent speed. Unable to reprogram substitute lasers from a NASA payload, they imaged a crater, estimated its size, and used that to approximate the landers altitude. Given the circumstances, they came astonishingly closeOdysseus touched down 4 mph too fast, broke a gear, and tipped over. But it still worked.The lander showed incredible resilience, but it was a miracle we were able to do it with a measurement we took from 85 kilometers [53 miles] high, says CEO Steve Altemus. We were all pretty steady during it. But afterward, it was like, Oh my God, what did we just do?For this next mission, the company not only revised its lander engineering but also began diversifying beyond lunar landers. One of the IM-2 payloads, the Intuitive Machines Micro Nova Hopper One, is a 29-inch, 77-pound rocket-propelled drone designed to explore areas inaccessible to ground rovers. Last fall, the firm unveiled Moon Racer, a two-passenger prototype Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) that can carry and tow a combined 2,600 pounds, thats earmarked for a future manned mission.Building the lander [Photo: Susan Karlin]Were maturing [from] a startup having these aspirations and initial ideas to where were now battle-hardened by mission one, says Altemus. Were providing and building a cis-lunar economy [offering] three pillars of service: the delivery to the moon and ride share, the data transmission and navigation services for communicating around the moon, and infrastructure as a service. Thats the beginning of an economy and everyone can take advantage of that.Prospecting for resourcesThe Micro-Nova Hopper, nicknamed the Hopper and Grace (after computer science pioneer Grace Hopper), will gauge surface temperatures and water distribution using instruments from Hungary and Germany. Although designed for a 15-mile distance, it will make five shorter parabolic hops and level flights to hard-to-reach areas, including a crater that has never seen sunlight.It provides you extreme mobility in places that rovers cant go, says Martin. So, if you want to go into a pit or a lava tubeor a permanently shadowed region with steep walls, we can do it with a rocket-propelled drone.At the landing site, NASAs Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment 1 (PRIME-1) will operate a meter-long drill and a mass spectrometer to look for and analyze sub-surface resources that might sustain future human exploration, plus measure forces and temperature. The Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain (TRIDENT), from Blue Origins Honeybee Robotics, will bore three feet deep and bring regolith samples to the surface where the spectrometer will measure the compositions of volatile gases escaping from the material.[Photo: NASA/Honeybee Robotics]As its done with other landers, NASA is outfitting Athena with a Laser Retroreflector Array (LRA), mirrors that reflect laser light back to an orbiting spacecraft initially emitting the light to determine the landers location. LRAs will enable precision landmarks for Artemis sites to guide the arriving landers.Lunar Outposts Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP) is slated to be the first commercial rover on another planetary body. Sporting internal prospecting instruments and an MIT-designed CW Time of Flight camera, the 22-pound solar-powered vehicle will travel about a mile from the lander, 3D mapping the lunar surface and scouting for ice and other valuable resources. Another MIT device, AstroAnt, a .95-ounce micro-rover with magnetic wheels, will roam MAPPs surface to measure its internal temperature to assess MAPPs healtha proof of concept for future iterations that might monitor and fix space hardware remotely. Its very meta, laughs Justin Cyrus, Lunar Outposts founder and CEO.[Photo: Lunar Outpost]MAPP carries drills and wheels designed to grip the powdery regolith with little excavators to collect and analyze samples that NASA will eventually retrieve. The space agency will pay the Denver company $1 to transfer the sample ownership to set a legal precedent and procedural framework for a private company to own and sell what it mines on a celestial body. NASA has similar contracts with other companies for future samples. Considering the investment cost and potential rewardshelium-3, for example, is among the most expensive substances on Earth due to its scarcity, but abundant on the moonthis step gives companies more confidence they wont be legally challenged before spending billions to extract resources on a large scale.If youre looking at resources not only on the moon but the near-Earth asteroids, its significantly more resources than weve ever had access to, says Cyrus.Can you hear me now?In a first step towards a lunar cellular system, Nokia Bell Labs is providing a 4G LTE communications network between MAPP, the Hopper, and a Lunar Surface Communications System (LSCS) on the lander serving as a cell tower. The rovers, carrying antennas and radio equipment, will venture from the lander and beam signals back to the LSCS, which will measure the speeds and bandwidth. This network will also enable the three vehicles to talk to one another. The lander will sport a direct-to-Earth radio connection so mission controllers can receive data and images and remotely operate the probes.The main goal was to prove to NASA that it can take the cellular technology and adapt it for space, compared to using UHF or proprietary technology, says Nokia Bell Labs president Thierry Klein. Additionally, some of the data collected from the rovers would transmit over the Nokia network to the lander and relayed back to Earth.Commercial symbiosisColumbia Sportswear continues its symbiotic partnership with IM after IM-1 helped the clothing company perfect its Omni-Heat Infinity insulationa lightweight, breathable, heal-reflecting foil used in its winter jackets. On the first mission, IM applied it to one panel to buffer Odysseus cryogenic propellant tanks from extreme radiation and a 450-degree Fahrenheit temperature range. This time, its covering more of the lander packages.Columbia Insulation [Photo: Susan Karlin]Columbias materials enabled a more cost-effective and nuanced method of thermal management than off-the-shelf aerospace materials from the Apollo missions, says Haskell Beckham, Columbias VP of innovation. We also learned that in space you typically have multilayers of installation. So, we took this information, brought it back to our lab in Portland, and made a jacket where we had the insulating layer, not only on the lining but also on the shelf fabric, which made it much warmer.But wait, theres more...Other commercial payloads include Dymons YAOKI rover, IMs first Japanese commercial payload, that will capture images of the lunar surface. Lonestar Data Holdings is sending a data center that will test data transmission between Earth and the moon. The Florida start-up wants to establish a server system on the moon for extremely secure data storage for disaster recovery. After proving its software on IM-1, Lonestar will now test its ability to remotely load, store, and retrieve data from the server.Three satellites will hitch rideshares, deploying from Athena for other destinations. Jet Propulsion Laboratorys Lunar Trailblazer satellite will orbit the moon, mapping the water distribution on its surface. Astroforges Odin satellite may become the first commercial satellite in deep space when it sets out to image a near-Earth asteroid. Epic Aerospace Chimera, a chemical propulsion system to help payloads change orbit, will head to low Earth orbit.Creative cultureIt takes a little whimsy to pull off pioneering engineering. And IMs self-described battle-hardened stance hasnt disrupted its playful engineering nerd culture. Back at headquarters, cutouts of Star Wars characters grace the ceiling beams, while the Moon Racer LTV sports longhorns, a flourish spearheaded by CTO Tim Crain, a former Texas Longhorn football player.Part of its corporate mantra is serving as a space ambassador, by partnering with academics on science objectives, such as the University of Arizona on Hopper mission science; artists, like Jeff Koons, who flew a payload on IM-1; and STEM aspirants with student internships, such as those at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (Altemus alma mater) and nearby San Jacinto Community College.Before we flew to the moon, I think we had 20 people apply for our internships, says Martin. After we landed on the moon, we had 1,500 people apply. We found incredible young, bright minds to come and work here. Having art projects is a good way to encourage people outside of the aerospace world to imagine what can happen in space.This mission, MIT has an art tie-in to its payloads, titled To the Moon to Stay. The first, HUMANS (an anagram of Humanity United with MIT Art and Nanotechnology in Space), was inspired by the Voyager Golden Record. Its a 2-inch silicon wafer flying aboard MAPP that contains an etched recording of voices in numerous languages describing what space means for humanity.The other is a Lunar Mission Control installation at MIT Media Lab thats a collaboration between the MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative, which designed the 3D camera and AstroAnt aboard MAPP, MIT Architecture students, and Inploration, a Los Angeles space education and design lab. It consists of a lunar-inspired self-supporting half-dome with displays connecting the public to the MIT payloads through a short film, real-time views of the lunar surface and payload operators, and a VR experience that lets visitors interact with the software they use.Of course, it all depends on how you define art. Altemus, who comes from a family of painters, considers the mission itself a creative endeavor. Thats a piece of art right there, he says, motioning to the Hopper. The people who can actually put that together are artists in their own right. Its important that people understand the art of engineering. And the day I dont feel that way, its time for me to go.