When Intuitive Machines’ Athena lunar lander makes moonfall around 12:30 p.m. EST Thursday, spectators on Earth will be able to watch it happen.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab is partnering with Comcast to stream the landing at the moon’s south pole, share never-before-seen 3D lunar images, and provide live updates of the 20-day mission on X1, the streaming and live TV platform of Xfinity. Coverage will also appear on a website jointly developed by the partners.
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“Our return to the Moon is not just about advancing technology, it’s about inspiring the next generation of explorers who are alive today and will travel to the Moon in their lifetime,” said Ariel Ekblaw, principal investigator for MIT’s Lunar Mission. “By working with Xfinity to bring the amazing images and videos we collect at the lunar surface to people across the globe, we’re making it easy for everyone to experience the moon in ways they never have before.”
MIT is one of several payload customers on Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 mission, a follow-up to the 2024 mission during which it pulled off the first successful private lunar landing. Its three science payloads are backed by NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative and are intended to help gather information to aid the Artemis III human lunar landing, scheduled to launch to the moon’s south pole in mid-2027.
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“Athena” is carrying Lunar Outpost’s Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP) rover, which will venture about 1 mile across the surface collecting samples for NASA. MAPP will deploy MIT’s three payloads: the AstroAnt miniature robotic swarm, Humanity United with MIT Art and Nanotechnology in Space (HUMANS), and a camera that will snap photos and video.
That imagery will be transmitted to mission control and beamed to television screens in 3D. If conditions allow, the camera will also capture the first Earth eclipse—when it blocks the sun—from the moon.
To access live streaming of the landing and key mission objectives, X1 viewers can give the command “to the moon” to their voice remote. Comcast said it plans to expand the experience across its entertainment platforms in the future.
Editor’s note: This story first appeared on FLYING.
