When you buy through links on our site , we may clear an affiliate commission . Here ’s how it works .
The first private space vehicle to ever land successfully on the lunation touched down safely last Nox ( Feb. 22 ) .
The Odysseus lander , built by Houston - based company Intuitive Machines , make it near the lunar south pole at 6:23 p.m. ET . It is the first U.S. lander to park on the lunation since Apollo 17 in 1972 .
A photo snapped by the Odysseus lander as it circled above the moon’s surface.
And true to its namesake , Odysseus ' journey was pregnant with trials : In special , a malfunction in the ballistic capsule ’s landing place optical maser sent mission railroad engineer scrambling .
Without these lasers , the ballistic capsule temporarily lacked direction for judge landing distances , but after some tense moments , the railroad engineer remotely uploaded a software package speckle for aNASAbackup laser that was also on board .
Further nail - biting second follow as engineers worked to establish that the craft had safely set ashore . Finally , the squad find a faint signaling from the moon ’s surface .
A fish-eye camera image of Earth taken by the Odysseus lander.
" Houston , Odysseus has found its new home , " Tim Crain , the chief applied science military officer of Intuitive Machines , said as the ascendency room break out with cheers .
" The U.S. has render to the Moon , " NASA administratorBill Nelsonsaid in a statementposted on X , formerly known as Twitter .
Related : Intuitive Machines moon lander beams home arresting photos of Earth from space
The Odysseus mission is part of NASA ’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services computer programme , which the outer space bureau establish to incentivize the development of private - sector lunar lander . " Today is a Clarence Shepard Day Jr. that shows the superpower and promise of NASA ’s commercial-grade partnership , " Nelson enounce .
NASA intends to cut these troupe to transfer loading and scientific equipment to the moon . " These instruments will prepare us for future human exploration of the Moon underArtemis , " the space agencywrote on X.
Launched atop aSpaceXFalcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral , Florida on Feb. 15 , Odysseus entered lunar orbit on Feb. 21 . It completed one tight grommet over the lunar control surface before slow for land with a few precisely time locomotive engine bursts .
The spacecraft landed tight to the Malapert A crater in the lunar south perch . The region has long bait scientist with the comportment of body of water ice-skating rink , which could one day be asource for Eruca sativa fuel .
— The moonshine is shrivel , causing landslides and moonquakes on the dot where NASA wants to establish its first lunar colony
— Elon Musk ’s SpaceX could launch a secret lunation lander within week
— speck landing : NASA artificial satellite spies Japan ’s resurrect SLIM moon lander on lunar aerofoil
NASA get off six payloads on board Odysseus , including a set of television camera plan to study the behaviour of moon dust . The cameras are expected to commence operating a few hours after land and will draw until lunar night ( the fourteen days of darkness when its side of the lunation is face aside from the sunlight ) fall in about a week ’s time .
Odysseus is the second ship to ever land on the moon ’s south pole and may become the first to take measurements of the shape there . The first wasIndia ’s Chandrayaan-3 , which touched down successfully in August 2023 butdied not long after its comer .
Sending scientific tech to the moon is far from soft : Five of the last nine moon landing place attempts have ended in unsuccessful person , include last month ’s Peregrine mission from the Pittsburgh - base company Astrobotic Technology . This lunar landerbecame maroon in spaceafter an oxidizer leak beforecrashing back to Earth .
Even reasonably successful landing have had their hitches : Japan ’s SLIM lander made arecord - breakingly precise landingon the moonshine last calendar month , but it touched down the wrong way up .
