The first American lunar landing since the final Apollo mission in 1972 has been successfully accomplished, according to NASA officials.
In a historic event, a lunar lander named Odysseus has touched down on the moon’s south pole.
It’s the first American mission to the lunar surface since 1972, and the first landing of the Artemis program, NASA’s effort to return people to the moon for extended stays.
Scientists explained that the feat is a necessary step in the planning eventually return astronauts to Earth’s natural satellite but it is also a difficult one.
Last year, a Russian spacecraft crashed into the moon’s surface. Efforts by Israel and India failed in 2019 — though India pulled off the feat last year.
Recently, a Japanese spacecraft landed softly — but on its side.
Astrobotic, a Pittsburgh based company working to explore the Moon with robots in partnership with NASA, failed to reach the lunar surface after a propulsion problem.
Intuitive Machines’ uncrewed lunar lander landed at 6:23pm ET (2323 UTC), bringing NASA science to the Moon’s surface.
Carrying NASA science and technology to the Moon, Intuitive Machines’ uncrewed lunar lander touched down at 5:23 p.m. CST on Thursday.
The instruments aboard Odysseus will prepare NASA for future human exploration of the Moon under Artemis.
An unmanned, robotic lunar lander launched by a private U.S. company landed on the moon Thursday evening.
“We can confirm, without a doubt, that our equipment is on the surface of the moon,” said Stephen Altemus, CEO of Intuitive Machines, the Houston-based company that operated the Odysseus spacecraft. “Welcome to the moon.”
As it approached the surface of the moon, Odysseus lost contact with NASA, resulting several anxious minutes for those who worked on the joint project. But after approximately fifteen minutes of searching, officials confirmed that they were once again receiving signals from the spacecraft.
“A commercial lander named Odysseus, powered by a company called Intuitive Machines, launched up on a Space X rocket, carrying a bounty of NASA scientific instruments and bearing the dream of a new adventure, a new adventure in science, innovation and American leadership, well, all of that aced the landing of a lifetime,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said after contact had been reestablished. “Today for the first time in more than a half century, the U.S. has returned to the moon.”
Altemus had estimated that Odysseus had an 80% chance of successfully landing on the moon, citing previous failed attempts as an advantage. “We’ve stood on the shoulders of everybody who’s tried before us,” Altemus said.
It was the first American mission to land on the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972 and the first private spacecraft ever to make a soft landing there.
While it was a private mission, NASA paid Intuitive Machines $118 million to deliver six instruments to the moon. And the U.S. space agency provided streaming video of the landing.
Additional updates will be available Friday, Feb. 23.
These instruments will prepare the space agency for future human exploration of the Moon under Artemis.
Intuitive Machines was selected to be part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services vendor pool in 2018 and was awarded three task orders for scientific payload delivery.
The first Intuitive Machines flight, IM-1, used the company’s Nova-C lunar lander to land in the Moon’s South Pole region.
The mission carrying six NASA payloads will focus on plume-surface interactions, space weather/lunar surface interactions, radio astronomy, precision landing technologies, and a communication and navigation node for future autonomous navigation technologies.
Intuitive Machines’ second awarded flight, IM-2, is schedu led to land at the lunar South Pole in 2024. This will be the first on site, or in-situ, resource utilization demonstration on the Moon utilizing a drill and mass spectrometer to measure the volatile content of subsurface materials.
The third Intuitive Machines awarded flight, IM-3, is scheduled to land at the Moon’s Reiner Gamma swirl in 2024 using the Nova-C lunar lander. Payloads include a magnetometer, camera, electron and ion spectrometer, a small rover with a second magnetometer, and a multispectral microscope.
This payload suite will study the properties of the Reiner Gamma swirl and its mini-magnetosphere.
The delivery also includes a demonstration of swarm robotics technology with the deployment of four small autonomous rovers.
Two international payloads will investigate the near-surface radiation environment (South Korea) and an actuated retroreflector provided by the European Space Agency will make high-resolution Earth-Moon distance measurements.
Reiner Gamma is a lunar magnetic anomaly known as a lunar swirl located on the lunar near side in Oceanus Procellarum.
Lunar swirls are associated with magnetic anomalies in the lunar crust, but more data is needed to understand their formation.
The eighth flight of the Dragon spacecraft with people as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program launched Aug. 25, 2023, for a six-month science mission aboard the International Space Station.