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 uncrewed Odysseus lander is also the first American spacecraft to reach the lunar surface since Apollo 17’s Challenger lunar module in December 1972.
The Odysseus, carrying NASA science and technology instruments, reached the lunar south pole Thursday at 6:23 p.m. Eastern time after an autonomous descent that concluded its journey to the moon. A nerve-wracking few minutes followed as Intuitive Machines mission control waited for communications from the probe, before confirmation that a weak signal had been received from Odysseus’ high-gain antenna.
“Our equipment is on the surface of the Moon and we are transmitting,” the mission director said during a live stream of the landing.
Ulysses landed near the moon’s Malapert A crater, an area chosen as a relatively flat and safe landing zone among the moon’s otherwise heavily cratered southern highlands.
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The landing zone was also chosen because the location will help mission planners figure out how to communicate and send data to Earth from a position where Earth is low on the lunar horizon, according to NASA.
Intuitive Machines shares LUNR,
they closed Thursday’s session down 11.2%, but are up 184.5% over the past three months, compared to the S&P 500 index’s SPX gain of 11.6%. The stock rose more than 29% in aftermarket trading.
The mission carries NASA instruments focused on plume-surface interactions, space-weather interactions and the lunar surface, radio astronomy, precision landing technologies and a communications and navigation node for future autonomous navigation technologies, according to the space agency.
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Commercial Moon landings are considered important exploration missions for NASA’s Artemis lunar exploration program. Last month, NASA said it was targeting September 2025 for its first crewed Artemis mission around the Moon, and September 2026 for its Artemis mission that will land astronauts near the lunar south pole.
Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C-class lunar lander, nicknamed Ulysses after the hero of Homer’s The Odyssey, launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on February 15. The lM-1 mission was timed to take into account the monthly lunar blackout period; Correct lighting conditions are available for only a few days a month near the Moon’s south pole.
Complex lunar missions carry a high level of risk. Only five countries – the United States, the Soviet Union, China, India and Japan – have completed moon landings, and the United States is the only country to place astronauts on the lunar surface. In January, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s unmanned Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM, landed on the Moon, but in an image taken by SLIM’s rover the probe appeared to be upside down on the lunar surface.
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Other commercial Moon landings have also been dogged by problems. In 2019, Israel’s Beresheet attempted to become the first private lander on the lunar surface, but crashed during the landing attempt. Four years later, the private Japanese mission Hakuto-R also failed to achieve a “soft landing” on the Moon.
Last month, private US space company Astrobotic Technology ended its troubled mission to place its Peregrine lander on the moon.
Like Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander, Intuitive’s Nova-C lander is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative to bring science and technology to the lunar surface.
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According to Intuitive Machines, the Nova-C landers are scheduled for three missions to the Moon, each of which involves minor modifications to the vehicle.