Odysseus spacecraft is the first private mission to land on the moon

Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander has touched down on the moon. This is the first time {that a} private agency has landed a spacecraft on the lunar floor, a welcome success after a current string of high-profile touchdown failures by different firms.

The Odysseus craft launched for this flight, referred to as the IM-1 mission, atop a Falcon 9 rocket on 14 February. It arrived in lunar orbit on 21 February earlier than touchdown close to the south pole of the moon on 22 February.

The dwell feed from mission management was tense, as the deliberate touchdown time slipped by with no communication from the lander. Eventually, a number of minutes after Odysseus was supposed to land, mission director Tim Crain in Intuitive Machines’ mission management stated, “We’re picking up a signal – it’s faint, but it’s there.”

The sign confirmed that the spacecraft had touched down on the moon, however the state of the craft is nonetheless unknown. Nevertheless, the touchdown was a hit. “I know this was a nail-biter but we are on the surface,” stated Intuitive Machines CEO Stephen Altemus. “Welcome to the moon.”

Before this touchdown, three different firms tried to ship landers to the moon. SpaceIL’s Beresheet craft launched in 2019 and ispace’s Hakuto-R mission launched in 2022, however every of them crash-landed and was wrecked.

Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander didn’t even make it that far after its January launch – a gasoline leak pressured its operators to return it to Earth to expend in the ambiance. With the success of IM-1, Intuitive Machines joins an elite membership – solely the nationwide house companies of the Soviet Union, the US, China, India and Japan have efficiently landed on the moon earlier than.

Now that it has landed safely, the second a part of the IM-1 mission can start. Odysseus carried six NASA payloads and 6 industrial payloads with it to the moon. Some of those, resembling units to help with the touchdown and a digital camera to take images of the touchdown, have already served their objective. Just a few have succeeded simply by making it to the moon – maybe most notably a set of 125 tiny sculptures by artist Jeff Koons. Others, together with devices to measure how the surroundings round the moon impacts its floor, start their missions now.

The IM-1 mission is a part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, by way of which authorities contracts are awarded to private firms with the goal of constructing house flight capabilities by way of public-private partnerships. Three extra lunar landings are deliberate by way of CLPS in 2024, one in every of which is Intuitive Machines’ mission to harvest water ice from the south pole of the moon.