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Last February, the uncrewed Odysseus spacecraft made history by making the first soft landing on the lunar surface by a commercial company and the first such landing there since the Apollo program ended in the 1970s.

The lander, designed by the Houston company Intuitive Machines, tipped on its side after its laser-guided navigation system failed to operate as planned, but many of its payloads were still able to carry out experiments on the moon's surface.

Now, nearly a year later, Intuitive Machines is preparing to go back with a similar lander named Athena. This second lander is the latest in its contract to build four vehicles for NASA as part of a program in which the space agency is working with private companies to conduct missions on and around the moon. The goal is to help NASA prepare for future Artemis missions that would send humans back to the lunar surface.

Athena is tentatively set to launch on board a SpaceX rocket in late February.

In an interview with Houston Matters producer Michael Hagerty, the company's chief technical officer Tim Crain details what Athena will have on board and explains how the problems with the first lander are being addressed.

What's On Board

This mission, dubbed IM-2, will land about 100 km from the moon's south pole. Crain said the first mission, IM-1, was all about demonstrating that the company could get to the moon and survive. And now IM-2 is all about moving around once you're there.

Among the devices doing that moving is a small rover about 18 inches long and weighing around 22 pounds. It will deploy from the vehicle and conduct experiments, and then the rover will then eject an even-smaller rover of sorts that's about 20 grams and roughly the size of a Matchbox car. In the future, this mini rover is intended to be used to inspect and maintain spacecraft.

MORE: Justin Cyrus of Lunar Outpost talks about his mini lunar rover

Also, a rocket drone the company is calling a "hopper" will take off from the side of the lander and hop into a crater that rarely -- if ever -- sees light.

And while it will not be moving around apart from the lander, a NASA drill will bore into the lunar surface looking for signs of water.

"We're going to hop, we're going to rove, and we're going to drill," Crain said. "It's going to be very exciting."

All of those components that will be moving around will need to communicate with each other. So, cell phone company Nokia will have an experiment on board that uses 4G cellular signals allowing these devices to communicate back with the lander, which will act almost like a small-scale cell tower. This would help develop future communications systems for crewed missions on the moon.

"In the future when people are communicating person to person on the moon in a hab [habitat], in a permanent colony, this will be the kind of technology they use to have their communications."

What's Different and What's the Same

While Athena is the second of four landers Intuitive Machines is building for NASA, Crain said it's about 90 percent identical to the first lander -- aside from the payloads mounted to its sides.

"By and large, it's the same inside in terms of propellant, propulsion, computers, software as the first mission," he said.

However, changes include modifications to the wiring that controls the laser-guided navigation system and changes to testing procedure in order to ensure the system works before launch.

"Easy to fix, but it's a detail," he said. "And spaceflight is really a history of getting all the details right to make it work."

That and other changes are the result of what Crain described as a rigorous process after IM-1 to identify what worked and what did not for the benefit of future missions.