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

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 reside feed from mission management was tense, because the deliberate touchdown time slipped by with no communication from the lander. Ultimately, a number of minutes after Odysseus was presupposed to land, mission director Tim Crain in Intuitive Machines’s mission management stated, “We’re selecting up a sign – it’s faint, nevertheless it’s there.”

The sign confirmed that the spacecraft had touched down on the moon, however the state of the craft remains to be unknown. Nonetheless, the touchdown was successful. “I do know this was a nail-biter however we’re on the floor,” stated Intuitive Machines CEO Stephen Altemus. “Welcome to the moon.”

Earlier than this touchdown, three different corporations 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 gas leak pressured its operators to return it to Earth to fritter away within the environment. With the success of IM-1, Intuitive Machines joins an elite membership – solely the nationwide area 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 business payloads with it to the moon. A few of these, corresponding to gadgets to help with the touchdown and a digital camera to take images of the touchdown, have already served their goal. A couple of 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 setting across the moon impacts its floor, start their missions now.

The IM-1 mission is a part of NASA’s Industrial Lunar Payload Companies (CLPS) initiative, via which authorities contracts are awarded to personal corporations with the goal of constructing area flight capabilities via public-private partnerships. Three extra lunar landings are deliberate via CLPS in 2024, one among which is Intuitive Machines’s mission to reap water ice from the south pole of the moon.