Private US spacecraft achieves first moon landing since 1972

The first private American spacecraft landed on the moon on Thursday, after launching atop SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center. This marked the first U.S. lunar landing without astronauts in more than 50 years.

The NOVA-C lander from Intuitive Machines, Odysseus, is the second private lander to attempt landing on the moon. Last month, Astrobotic Technology’s Peregrine lander developed a fuel leak that forced the company to abandon its landing attempt.

A smooth touchdown puts the U.S. back in business on the moon for the first time since NASA astronauts closed out the Apollo program in 1972. The company became the first private outfit to ace a moon landing.

Students from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach helped design a special camera on the lander.

[WATCH THE LAUNCH AGAIN BELOW]

The students designed what’s called “EagleCam” to capture the lander’s descent. They be watched as the spacecraft landed near the moon’s south pole.

On Thursday, controllers lowered the orbit from just under 60 miles to 6 miles — a crucial maneuver occurring again on the moon’s far side — before aiming for a touchdown near the moon’s south pole. It was a dicey place to land with all the craters and cliffs, but deemed prime real estate for astronauts since the permanently shadowed craters are believed to hold frozen water.

Experiments are also onboard that could help with future lunar landing missions, like Artemis III.

NASA project scientist Sue Lederer described in a teleconference how these landers lay the groundwork for NASA’s long-term goals of science and exploration on the moon.

“The goal here is for us to investigate the moon in preparation for Artemis,” Lederer said. “These commercial companies will be bringing our instruments along for the ride enabling our investigations.”

Steve Altemus, CEO of Intuitive Machines, spoke with News 6′s James Sparvero about the experiments onboard, like a payload that films dust ejecting from the lunar surface.

“So we get a really good understanding of how that dust plume moves without an atmosphere so that when designing systems like habitats and landing pads, we can understand what the detrimental effects of that dust impinging on them might be,” Altemus said.

The spacecraft landed on the moon at 6:23 p.m. EST, Intuitive Machines announced Thursday, up from 5:30 p.m.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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