Spacecraft Makes First U.S. Moon Landing In Over 50 Years

Intuitive Machines’ uncrewed Odysseus spacecraft made the first moon landing by an American vehicle in more than 50 years Thursday evening, finishing a week-long voyage from the Earth after a short delay and marking the first-ever soft lunar landing by a private company.

Odysseus’ touchdown near the moon’s south pole is the first lunar landing by a U.S. entity since Apollo 17 in 1972, though other countries have launched spacecraft to the moon more recently, including China in 2019 and Japan earlier this year.

It also breaks a streak of failed attempts by U.S. companies, including Astrobotic Technology, whose Peregrine lander malfunctioned on its journey to the moon, before burning up as it attempted to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere last month.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson confirmed the spacecraft’s landing after it was detected by a “faint signal,” saying it “aced the landing of a lifetime,” calling it “a giant leap forward for all of humanity.”

Odysseus, a spacecraft roughly the size of a phone booth that was launched into space earlier this month on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, is intended to spend a week collecting data on the moon’s surface before losing power, though its operation on the moon’s surface remains uncertain.

Its final hours in the moon’s orbit were mired in glitches, including a communications breakdown prior to its landing, as well as an issue with the spacecraft’s laser instruments that failed to operate, causing a two-hour delay in its landing.

NASA awarded Intuitive Machines $118 million to conduct the moon landing, part of the space agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, an initiative that aims to allow private companies to develop lunar landers. NASA plans to continue to hire private companies to transport scientific instruments and other cargo to the moon as the agency embarks on a monumental Artemis mission to bring astronauts back to the moon.

After launching its uncrewed Artemis I mission to the moon’s orbit in 2022, the agency has since faced a handful of setbacks, including last month, when it delayed a pair of missions due to technical issues, postponing the Artemis II mission from November 2024 to September 2025.

NASA has defended the program, saying it hopes to boost scientists’ knowledge of space exploration and establish a “long-term presence” on the moon—and potentially send astronauts to Mars for the first time ever.