Intuitive Machines's Odysseus lunar lander becomes the first privately-built spacecraft to safely complete a moon landing.

Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander touched down on the moon Thursday after a historic, nail-biting descent following a last-minute navigation sensor malfunction, becoming the first U.S.-built spacecraft to stick a moon landing in more than 50 years and the first ever by a private company.

After delaying the final descent by one orbit to press an experimental NASA navigation sensor into service — and to test hurriedly-written software patches to route its data to the lander’s flight computer — Odysseus settled to a touchdown at 6:23 p.m. EST near a crater known as Malapert A some 186 miles from the south pole of the moon.

But the spacecraft’s condition was not immediately known. Engineers at Intuitive Machines’ Nova control center in Houston expected it to take up to two minutes or so to re-establish communications after landing, but the expected signal was not immediately found.

        • reflectedodds@lemmy.world
          11·
          8 months ago

          Over the course of about 30 days, the Artemis III astronauts will travel to lunar orbit, where two crew members will descend to the surface and spend approximately a week near the South Pole of the Moon conducting new science before returning to lunar orbit to join their crew for the journey back to Earth.

          Artemis 3, no earlier than Sept 2026

          Source: https://www.nasa.gov/mission/artemis-iii/

    • LanternEverywhere@kbin.social
      62·
      8 months ago

      You’re dreaming too small. You’re almost definitely gonna live to see humans walk on the moon. And since you couldn’t have been born before the early 70s, then it’s reasonable that you might live to see civilians on the moon! And you yourself might even wind up in space!

        • gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          2·
          8 months ago

          One of the major parts of the current Artemis missions is to put a lunar base in orbit and have construction of lunar hab modules be based out of that orbital base

          There’s no way they’re not going to use at least some civilian contractors for at least some parts of that mission when we’re already using civvy work for making the damn rockets