A Jumping Lunar Robot Is About to Explore a Pitch-Black Moon Crater for the First Time

These two instruments and Grace’s camera might tell us if there is ice in the crater. Although sheet ice sitting on the crater’s floor is “unlikely,” says Martin, it’s possible that Grace might see hints of ice mixed into the lunar soil. Such a finding would be invaluable for the return of humans to the moon. NASA wants to land astronauts at the moon’s south pole starting with its Artemis III mission on SpaceX’s Starship vehicle in 2027. Future Artemis missions might involve descending into some of the moon’s craters of eternal darkness to collect some of the ice.

Eventually, astronauts might use this ice as a resource: as rocket fuel and drinking water. “If we have people there, they will need water,” says Pacher. It would also be scientifically valuable, giving us an insight into the origin of water on the moon and by extension Earth, too. IM-2 is of particular importance given that NASA’s other planned venture into a lunar crater to look for ice, its VIPER rover, was canceled last year. Grace is “the only way right now that anyone is going into a crater,” says Martin.

IM-2 also highlights the broad commercial partnerships that might be possible on upcoming lunar missions. Aside from Nokia and the other companies mentioned, there is another, more unusual partner on the lander too: a clothing company from Oregon in the US called Columbia Sportswear. The company has provided two fabric-like covers for the IM-2 mission based on its clothing brands, one on top of the lander to keep IM-2 cool in direct sunlight, and one on one of the lander’s helium tanks to keep the tank warm.

“We realized the same exact material that we use in our jackets and winter wear is actually qualified for space travel,” says Haskell Beckham, vice president of innovation at Columbia Sportswear. “Intuitive Machines reached out to us, and a partnership was born.”

There is another left-field instrument on board too—a space-hardened data-storage device built by the Florida-based company Lonestar Data Holdings. With 8 terabytes of data on board from various companies, including a copy of the video game Starfield supplied by the game’s developer, Bethesda, the company will practice transferring data from the moon. The idea is that placing storage drives in lunar orbit or on the moon’s surface in the future might be a way to keep valuable data away from hackers on Earth. “It is like an external hard drive to the planet,” says Chris Stott, the company’s CEO.

The widespread government cuts of the incumbent Trump administration have led to some uncertainty about the future of NASA’s focus on the moon. “We do not know how much they are going to continue the Artemis program,” says Forczyk, in favor of perhaps going to Mars, a preferred destination for Trump’s key adviser and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

The IM-2 mission, which is expected to last a lunar day—so a couple of weeks—on the surface, is still a sign of where a potential lunar economy could head, albeit a tentative one. “It is so new,” says Forczyk. “We’re in the baby stage.”

Updated 2-24-2025 5:50 pm GMT: An earlier version of this piece incorrectly stated that Astralytical is based in Georgia. It is based in Florida.

Updated 2-26-2025 11:30 am GMT: A misspelling of Haskell Beckham’s name was corrected.