US returns to lunar surface for first time in over 50 years: ‘Welcome to the moon’

The United States has returned to the lunar surface for the first time in more than 50 years after a privately-built spacecraft named Odysseus capped a nail-biting 73-minute descent from orbit with an apparently flawless touchdown near the moon’s south pole.

The so-called “soft landing” on Thursday, which the founder of Texas-based company Intuitive Machines had given only an 80% chance of succeeding, was designed to open a new era of lunar exploration as Nasa works towards a scheduled late-2026 mission to send humans back to the moon.

There was confusion in the minutes following the scheduled landing time of 5.24pm CT (11.24pm GT) as communications had not been re-established with the spacecraft, leaving managers uncertain if Odysseus was down or not.

But eventually the spacecraft spoke. And so did Dr Tim Crain, the mission director: “Welcome to the moon. Odysseus has found its new home,” he said.

In a pre-recorded statement, Bill Nelson, the Nasa administrator, called the achievement “a giant leap forward for all of humanity”.

The space agency’s most recent crewed visit, the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972, was also the last time any US-built spacecraft had touched down there, following last month’s failure of Peregrine One, another partnership between Nasa and a private company, Astrobotic.

There was no video of Odysseus’s fully autonomous descent, which slowed to about 2.2mph at 33ft above the surface. But a camera built by students at Florida’s Embry-Riddle aeronautical university was designed to fall and take pictures immediately before touchdown, and Nasa cameras were set to photograph the ground from the spacecraft.

The 14ft (4.3 metres) hexagonal, six-legged Nova-C lander, affectionately nicknamed Odie by Intuitive Machines employees, became the first commercial spacecraft to land on the moon. It is part of Nasa’s commercial lunar payload services (CLPS) initiative, in which the agency awards contracts to private partners, largely to support the Artemis program.

Nasa contributed $118m to get it off the ground, with Intuitive Machines funding a further $130m ahead of its 15 February launch from Florida’s Kennedy space center on a Falcon 9 rocket from Elon Musk’s SpaceX company.

The IM-1 mission, like the doomed Peregrine effort, is carrying a payload of scientific equipment designed to gather data about the lunar environment, specifically in the rocky region chosen as the landing site for Nasa’s crewed Artemis III mission planned for two years’ time.

It is a hazardous area – “pockmarked with all of these craters”, according to Nelson – but chosen because it is believed to be rich in frozen water that could help sustain a permanent lunar base crucial to future human missions to Mars.

Scientists announced last year that they believed tiny glass beads strewn across the moon’s surface contained potentially “billions of tonnes of water” that could be extracted and used on future missions.

The risks are worth it, Nelson told CNN on Thursday, “to see if there is water in abundance. Because if there’s water, there’s rocket fuel: hydrogen, and oxygen. And we could have a gas station on the south pole of the moon.”

The planned operational life of the solar powered lander is only seven days, before the landing site about 186 miles from the moon’s south pole moves into Earth’s shadow. But Nasa hopes that will be long enough for analysis of how soil there reacted to the impact of the landing.

Other instruments will focus on space weather effects on the lunar surface, while a network of markers for communication and navigation will be deployed.

“These daring moon deliveries will not only conduct new science at the moon, but they are supporting a growing commercial space economy while showing the strength of American technology and innovation,” Nelson said following Odysseus’s launch.

“We have so much to learn that will help us shape the future of human exploration for the Artemis generation.”

Steve Altemus, a former Nasa director of engineering who co-founded Intuitive Machines in 2013, had put the odds of a successful landing at about 80%. Talking with CNN earlier this month, he said his company had learned from others’ failures, including Astrobotic, and unsuccessful landing attempts in 2019 by Israel and India.

“We’ve stood on the shoulders of everybody who’s tried before us,” he said.

Through Artemis, Nasa’s return-to-the-moon program that also has longer-term visions of crewed missions to Mars within the next two decades, the US seeks to stay ahead of Russia and China, both of which are planning their own human lunar landings.

Only the US has previously landed astronauts, in six Apollo missions between 1969 and 1972, while five countries have placed uncrewed spacecraft there. Japan joined the US, Russia, China and India last month when its Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon (Slim) made a successful, if awkward touchdown after a three-month flight.

Two further Intuitive Missions launches are scheduled for later this year, including an ice drill to extract ingredients for rocket fuel, and another Nova-C lander containing a small Nasa rover and four small robots that will explore surface conditions.