Egyptian A lunar lander from private company Intuitive Machines landed on the moon Thursday (March 6) carrying drills, drones and rovers for NASA and other customers, but soon ran into trouble and may have tipped over.

Intuitive Machines said it was not yet clear whether the company’s 15-foot-tall Athena lander was upright near the moon’s south pole or tipped over on its side like the first spacecraft a year ago. Controllers hurriedly shut down some of the lander’s equipment to save power while trying to determine what went wrong.

It was the second lunar landing for the Texas company this week, following a successful landing on Sunday. The landings are part of NASA’s commercial lunar delivery program.

Intuitive Machines’ latest Athena lander dropped out of lunar orbit and descended as planned. The hour-long descent seemed to go smoothly until the laser navigation system began to malfunction during the final approach. It took a while for Mission Control to confirm the touchdown.

“We made it to the lunar surface,” mission manager and Direct Machines co-founder Tim Crain reported. Minutes later, he added, “It looks like we flipped over… We’re trying to assess our exact orientation on the lunar surface.”

Hours after landing, Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus said there were conflicting data about how Athena landed and whether it had flipped over on its side. He said the lander was close to its intended target site, but scans by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in the coming days will confirm its location and orientation.

Athena launched last week, communicating with controllers more than 235,000 miles away and generating solar power, officials said. Mission managers worked to salvage the mission to see if they could fire up a drill and deploy a drone to jump into the crater.

“Obviously, without knowing the exact orientation of the lander, it’s hard to say exactly what science we can and can’t do,” said Nicky Fox, NASA’s chief science officer.

Last year, Intuitive Machines put the U.S. back on the moon despite a lander that flipped on its side. Over the weekend, another Texas company joined the lunar landing party.

Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost became the first to successfully land on the northeastern edge of the moon’s near side on Sunday. Vacuums have collected lunar dust for analysis, and dust shields have shaken off abrasive particles that stick to all parts.

This time, Intuitive Machines is targeting a mountainous plateau just 160 kilometers from the moon’s south pole. The lander reached the plateau, but the company is unsure how close it got to the precise target point.

This week’s back-to-back lunar landings are part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Delivery Program, which aims to bring the agency’s experiments to the gray, dusty lunar surface and launch exploration missions. The commercial landers are also seen as advance guards for astronauts who will land on the moon later this decade under NASA’s Artemis program. The Artemis program is the successor to the Apollo moon landing program.