This image provided by Intuitive Machines shows its Odysseus lunar lander over the near side of the moon following lunar orbit insertion. Photo / AP
This image provided by Intuitive Machines shows its Odysseus lunar lander over the near side of the moon following lunar orbit insertion. Photo / AP
A private US lunar lander has touched down on the moon but contact with the craft is weak, company officials say.
There were no immediate updates on the lander’s condition from the company, Intuitive Machines.
Tension mounted in the company’s command centre in Houston, as controllers awaited a signal from the spacecraft some 400,000km away, which arrived about 10 minutes later.
“We’re evaluating how we can refine that signal,” said mission director Tim Crain. “But we can confirm, without a doubt, that our equipment is on the surface of the moon.”
The lander, Odysseus, descended from a moon-skimming orbit and guided itself toward the surface, searching for a relatively flat spot among all the cliffs and craters near the south pole.
This image provided by Intuitive Machines shows its Odysseus lunar lander with the Earth in the background on February 16, 2024. Photo / AP
The lander’s choreographed descent was the first for the US since 1972, when Apollo 17′s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt left the last bootprints in the desolate grey dust.
Intuitive Machines was striving to become the first private business to successfully pull off a lunar landing, a feat achieved by only five countries. Another company gave it a shot last month, but never made it to the moon, and the lander crashed back to Earth.
The newest lander, named Odysseus, reached the moon six days after rocketing from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The lander manoeuvred into a low lunar orbit in preparation for an early evening touchdown.
Flight controllers monitored the action from a command centre at company headquarters in Houston.
The six-footed carbon fibre and titanium lander — towering 14ft — carried six experiments for Nasa. The space agency gave the company $118 million to build and fly the lander, part of its effort to commercialise lunar deliveries ahead of the planned return of astronauts in a few years.
Intuitive Machines’ entry is the latest in a series of landing attempts by countries and private outfits looking to explore the moon and, if possible, capitalise on it. Japan scored a lunar landing last month, joining earlier triumphs by Russia, US, China and India.
Intuitive Machines' IM-1 Nova-C lunar lander in Houston in October 2023. Photo / AP
The US bowed out of the lunar landscape in 1972 after Nasa’s Apollo programme put 12 astronauts on the surface. A Pittsburgh company, Astrobotic Technology, gave it a shot last month but was derailed by a fuel leak that resulted in the lander plunging back through Earth’s atmosphere and burning up.
Intuitive Machines’ target was 300km shy of the south pole, around 80 degrees latitude and closer to the pole than any other spacecraft has come. The site is relatively flat, but surrounded by boulders, hills, cliffs and craters that could hold frozen water, a big part of the allure. The lander was programmed to pick, in real-time, the safest spot near the so-called Malapert A crater.
The solar-powered lander was intended to operate for a week, until the long lunar night.
Besides Nasa’s tech and navigation experiments, Intuitive Machines sold space on the lander to Columbia Sportswear to fly its newest insulating jacket fabric; sculptor Jeff Koons for 125 mini moon figurines; and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University for a set of cameras to capture pictures of the descending lander.
