On Thursday, February 15, Elon Musk's SpaceX company sent the Odysseus lander to the moon. It was built by the private American company Intuitive Machines. This was reported by Futurism, according to UNN.
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A Falcon 9 rocket with Odysseus on board was launched from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport in Florida.
The vehicle is scheduled to land near the Moon's south pole on February 22. If successful, the Odysseus lander will become both the first private lunar lander in history to safely land on the lunar surface and the first American spacecraft to land on the lunar surface since the Apollo 17 mission in late 1972.
The total weight of the lander is 675 kg. Odysseus carries 12 cargoes. Six of them, including a laser reflector and radio instruments, are owned by NASA. The rest belong to various private customers.
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Early last month, another company, the Pittsburgh-based startup Astrobotic, attempted to launch its own lunar lander with NASA funding. However, instead of landing successfully, Astrobotic's Peregrine spacecraft suffered a "critical" injury, flew into Earth orbit, and eventually burned up in our atmosphere.
The failed Astrobotic launch was not the first to fail. As The Economist explains, only two of the five landers, both private and public, that attempted to launch last year landed.
Recall
SpaceX launched four astronauts to the ISS as part of the Axiom Space 3 (Ax-3) mission. The crew will join seven other astronauts already on the station and will conduct about 30 scientific experiments over the course of two weeks.