Intuitive Machines Inc. made history Thursday when the Houston-based space-exploration company’s Odysseus spacecraft became the first commercial lander to successfully reach the moon.
The unbrewed Odysseus lander is the first American spacecraft to reach the lunar surface since Apollo 17’s Challenger lunar module in December 1972.
Odysseus, which is carrying NASA science and technology instruments, reached the lunar south pole at 6:23 pm Eastern time Thursday, after an autonomous descent that concluded its journey to the moon. A nerve-wracking few minutes followed while Intuitive Machines’ mission control awaited communications from the probe, before confirmation that a faint signal was received from Odysseus’s high-gain antenna.
“Our equipment is on the surface of the moon, and we are transmitting,” said the mission director on a livestream of the landing.
Odysseus landed near the moon’s Malapert A crater, an area chosen as a relatively flat and safe landing zone amid the moon’s otherwise heavily cratered southern highlands.
The landing zone was also chosen because the location will help mission planners understand how to communicate and send data back to Earth from a location where Earth is low on the lunar horizon, according to NASA.
Intuitive Machines shares LUNR, -11.16% ended Thursday’s session down 11.2% but have soared 184.5% in the last three months, compared with the S&P 500 index’s SPX gain of 11.6%. The stock soared more than 29% in after-market trading.
The mission is carrying NASA instruments focusing on plume-surface interactions, space-weather and lunar-surface interactions, radio astronomy, precision-landing technologies, and a communication and navigation node for future autonomous-navigation technologies, according to the space agency.
Commercial moon landings are considered important scouting missions for the NASA’s Artemis moon-exploration program. Last month, NASA said it is targeting September 2025 for its first crewed Artemis mission around the moon, and September 2026 for its Artemis mission to land astronauts near the lunar south pole.
Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C class lunar lander, dubbed Odysseus after the hero of Homer’s “Odyssey,” launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Feb. 15. The lM-1 mission was timed to take account of the monthly lunar-blackout period. The correct lighting conditions are available for only a few days each month near the moon’s south pole.
Complex lunar missions bring a high level of risk. Only five countries – the U.S., the Soviet Union, China, India, and Japan have completed moon landings, with the U.S. the only country to place astronauts on the lunar surface. In January, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s unscrewed Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, landed on the moon, but the probe appeared to be upside down on the lunar surface in an image taken by SLIM’s rover.
But commercial moon landings have been dogged with problems. In 2019 Israel’s Beresheet attempted to become the first private lander on the lunar surface, but crashed during its landing attempt. Four years later, Japan’s private Hakuto-R mission also failed to achieve a “soft landing” on the moon.
Last month, private U.S. space company Astrobotic Technology ended its troubled mission to place its Peregine lander on the moon.
Like Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander, Intuitive’s Nova-C class lander is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative to deliver science and technology to the moon’s surface.
The Nova-C landers are scheduled for three missions to the moon, each of which have slight vehicle modifications, according to Intuitive Machines.
