"Godspeed, Odysseus. Now let's go make history," Trent Martin, vice president of space systems at Intuitive Machines, said as the company's lunar lander was launched early Thursday. The Texas-based firm is aiming to become the first private company to successfully land a spacecraft on the moon, the New York Times reports. Three previous efforts have failed, including an attempt last month by Astrobotic Technology, another US company. Intuitive's NOVA-C lander, nicknamed after the hero in The Odyssey, was launched by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket just after 1am Eastern, reports the AP.
If Odysseus makes it to the moon in one piece, it will be the first US spacecraft to land there in more than 50 years. The company plans to land the six-legged, 14-foot spacecraft 186 miles from the moon's south pole, the AP reports. NASA plans to send astronauts to the same region later this decade. The landing is planned for Feb. 22 after a day in lunar orbit. The spacecraft is carrying six payloads of NASA instruments to gather data about the environment, where ice had been detected, reports Reuters. Other cargo includes an art project by Jeff Koons and a camera built by students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida.
Astrobotic's Peregrine lander, which failed after a massive propellant leak, was also carrying NASA payloads. Astrobotic and Intuitive are the first companies to launch spacecraft under the space agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, designed to save money by using private companies to send payloads to the moon. Thomas Zurbuchen, former associate administrator for science at NASA, started the program in 2018. He tells the Times that NASA expects around 50% of the CLPS missions to fail, which will still work out cheaper than having NASA design and operate its own lunar landers. (More moon landings stories.)
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