Odysseus spacecraft makes historic Moon landing

A spacecraft called Odysseus has become the first privately-owned mission to land intact on the Moon, and the first successful US lunar landing since 1972.

The Nova-C Odysseus lander, built by Texas-based spaceflight company Intuitive Machines (IM), landed near a crater named Malapert A near the Moon’s south pole late on Thursday.

“I know this was a nail biter but we are on the on the surface and we are transmitting,” Steve Altemus, IM’s chief executive, said as he announced the landing.

“Welcome to the Moon.”

The spacecraft touched down at about 6:23 pm EST (23.23pm GMT) on Thursday, the company and Nasa commentators said in a joint webcast of the landing from IM’s mission operations centre in Houston.

On board is a suite of scientific instruments and technology demonstrations for Nasa and several commercial customers designed to operate for seven days on solar energy before the sun sets over the landing site.

The landing makes Odysseus the first US Moon landing since the final mission of the Apollo programme, Apollo 17, 52 years ago.

The spacecraft, which is about the size of a British phone box, blasted off last week from Cape Canaveral in Florida on top of a Falcon 9 rocket made by Elon Musk’s company SpaceX.

The mission could pave the way for astronauts to land on the Moon as part of Nasa’s Artemis programme.

The lunar south pole is thought to contain water ice, which would be a valuable resource for future human exploration.

Controlled Moon landings have only been performed by government agencies including the US, Soviet Union, China, India and Japan.

On board Odysseus are 12 payloads including a Nasa instrument known as Scalpss (Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies), a four-camera system which aims to capture Odysseus’s descent to the lunar surface.

The lander will also be carrying a set of 125 tiny sculptures, called Moon Phases, created by US artist Jeff Koons.

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