The Intuitive Machines spacecraft is the first American lunar lander since Apollo.
Intuitive Machines landed its Odysseus spacecraft on the Moon on Thursday at 6:23 p.m. ET, becoming the first private company to pull off a soft landing on the lunar surface.
The IM-1 mission delivered 12 payloads near the Malapert A crater in the Moon’s South Pole region following an eight-day journey through space. The lander was originally scheduled for a touchdown at 4:24 p.m., but flight controllers decided to have it go around the Moon for an additional orbit before starting the landing sequence, to try to resolve an issue with an onboard laser instrument. The laser is designed to assess the Moon’s terrain to identify a safe landing spot. Instead, NASA repurposed a sensor on another onboard instruments to help the lander during its descent.
It was looking tense for a few minutes before Intuitive Machines announced that its lander had safely touched down. “I know this was a nail-biter, but we are on the surface, and we are transmitting,” Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus said during a live webcast.
