A spacecraft built by the company "Intuitive Machines" arrived in lunar orbit today, Wednesday, on its way to attempt the first American landing on the moon in over 50 years and the first landing ever by a private company’s spacecraft. The company stated in an online announcement that its six-legged Nova-C spacecraft, named "Odysseus," entered a circular orbit at an altitude of 92 kilometers above the lunar surface after performing a seven-minute main rocket engine burn for its orbital insertion maneuver.
Assuming everything goes as planned, the spacecraft is expected to gradually lower its orbit over the next 24 hours and land near the lunar south pole at 5:49 PM Eastern Time (2249 GMT) tomorrow, Thursday, carrying six payloads from NASA consisting of instruments designed to collect data about the lunar environment. It reported that "Odysseus is still in excellent condition," adding that throughout its time in lunar orbit, 384,000 kilometers from Earth, mission controllers in Houston will monitor flight data from the spacecraft and transmit images of the moon.
Odysseus’s journey began six days ago on February 15 aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, built by Elon Musk's SpaceX based in California, from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. If the mission is successful, it will mark the first controlled landing on the moon's surface by an American spacecraft since the last manned Apollo mission to the moon in 1972 and the first by a private company. This mission, if successful, will also represent the first trip to the moon's surface under NASA's Artemis lunar program, as the United States attempts to return astronauts to the moon before China lands its manned spacecraft there.
