America will return to the moon on Thursday, marking the first time a US-made spacecraft has landed on the moon’s surface since the last Apollo mission in 1972.
The $118 million unmanned Odysseus, or Odie, is flying through space and is about 300 miles from landing at 6:15 p.m. ET.
The six-legged robot lander is expected to land in a crater called Malapert A near the moon’s south pole at 6:24 pm ET after slowing down from 6,000 kilometers per hour.
The landing attempt will be streamed live NASA TV. Flight controllers are expected to confirm the landing about 15 seconds after the milestone is reached.
Although the mission is operated by a private company, NASA sponsored the trip to bring its scientific instruments and technology to the moon.
Odysseus, or Odie, is floating through space, but unlike previous voyages, this one is owned by Houston-based Intuitive Machines
The NASA payload will focus on collecting data on space weather interactions with the moon’s surface, radio astronomy and other aspects of the lunar environment for future landers and NASA’s planned return of astronauts later in the decade.
However, Odie’s mission comes a month after another private company attempted to land on the moon but failed.
Astrobotic Technology attempted to return America to the lunar surface with its Peregrine, but the lander suffered a propulsion system leak en route shortly after being placed in orbit.
Peregrine Falcon returned to Earth, where it burned up in the atmosphere.
The failure of Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander marked the third failure by a private company to achieve a moon landing, following ill-fated attempts by companies from Israel and Japan
But Intuitive Machines hopes to beat the odds with Odie.
The unmanned spacecraft has been orbiting the moon about 56 miles (92 kilometers) above the surface since entering orbit on Wednesday.
This image from Intuitive Machines shows the Odysseus lunar lander over the near side of the moon after entering lunar orbit on Wednesday
The six-legged robot lander is expected to land at 5:30 PM ET in a crater called Malapert A near the moon’s south pole
Nova-C attempts first moon landing by a private company
That’s six days after it was launched by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
This is the first launch to the moon carried out by Elon Musk’s company.
Odie remained “in excellent health” as it continued to orbit the moon, about 250,000 miles from Earth, transmitting flight data and lunar images to Intuitive Machines’ mission control center in Houston, the company said Wednesday.
The vehicle carries a range of scientific instruments and technology demonstrations for NASA and several commercial customers, designed to run on solar power for seven days before the sun sets over the polar landing site.
Intuitive Machines named its lander after Homer’s hero in “The Odyssey,” or simply “Odie.”
‘Religion, Odysseus. Now let’s make history,” said Trent Martin, vice president of space systems.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from launch pad LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center with Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lunar lander mission, in Cape Canaveral
Odysseus lunar lander
Only five countries – the US, Russia, China, India and Japan – have scored a moon landing, and no private company has done so yet.
The United States has not returned to the lunar surface since the Apollo program ended more than fifty years ago.
“There have been a lot of sleepless nights preparing for this,” Steve Altemus, co-founder and CEO of Intuitive Machines, said before the flight.
The current mission “will be one of the first forays to the South Pole to actually look at the environmental conditions of a place where we will send our astronauts in the future,” said Joel Kearns, a senior NASA official.
‘What kind of dust or dirt is there, how hot or cold does it get, what is the radiation environment? These are all things you would really like to know before you send out the first human explorers.”
