The U.S. company Intuitive Machines made a historic landing on the moon today . Intuitive Machines ’ Odysseus lander , launchedearlier this month , touched down on the moon ’s surface at 6:23 p.m. ET , mark the U.S. ’s first lunar landing place since Apollo 17 in 1972 and the first landing on the moon by a commercial entity .
The Odysseus lander is part of NASA’sCommercial Lunar Payload Services ( CLPS ) political program , which provides contract to companies for lunar services , and it persuade a number of NASA scientific instruments . It has landed on the lunar month ’s south pole , which is an surface area of particular scientific interest as it host water ice and is the region where NASA plans to land astronaut under its Artemis program .
The landing ’s succeeder was hailed by NASA Administrator Bill Nelson , who enunciate in an annunciation : “ On the eight sidereal day of a quarter - million - mile ocean trip , a ocean trip along the great cosmic bridgework from the launchpad at Kennedy Space Center to the fair game of the south pole of the synodic month , a commercial-grade lander namedOdysseus , powered by a party anticipate Intuitive Machines , establish upon a SpaceX rocket carrying a bounty of NASA scientific musical instrument , and bearing the pipe dream of a new dangerous undertaking . A newfangled adventure in scientific discipline , design , and American leading in space . Well , all of that nail the landing of a lifetime .
“ Today , for the first sentence in more than half a century , the U.S. has returned to the moon . ”
Coverage of the landing place waslive - streamedby Intuitive Machines , include a nail - sting few minutes after the expect landing place time when it took some time to demonstrate communication with the lander . The lander make for somewhat autonomously , so the squad at ground control had to waitress several transactions for communications to be establish to confirm that the landing place was successful .
Some last - minute alteration were required before the landing endeavour , as the spacecraft made both an excess correction maneuver to produce the ballistic capsule ’s ambit and execute an additional orbit before beginning the landing sequence . But the extra tending paid off , as the landing place was successful and the lander can now begin its operations with its 12 payloads .
Six of the onboard load are NASA experimentation , with the other six being from other individual companies . The deputation is expected to last for around a week , and will colect data from the lunar south pole .
