Odysseus moon landing live updates: first US lunar attempt in 52 years | Space

Ian Example

For years, space exploration has been a government enterprise, but a new program of Nasa opened the doors to private enterprise. Today’s landing attempt is one of a fleet of private spacecraft heading to the moon in the next few years. Under Nasa’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative, the agency funds companies to build spacecraft and deliver cargo – along with payloads from other paying organizations – to various sites on the lunar surface.

The arrangement is a way to transport equipment to the moon before astronauts return there later this decade. But this new era of lunar missions has some scientists scrambling. Future landers aim to drill for ice and other materials, possibly iron and rare earths, that are of interest to mining companies but could damage sites of scientific interest, or interfere with scientific experiments on the moon that rely on its isolation and pollution free environment.

The problem is that no one is coordinating plans. And as more landlubbers touch land, and more companies invest, it will become more difficult to implement a fair and reliable process through which all countries and all sectors can pursue their goals without confusing things for others.

The unmanned Nova-C lander built by Intuitive Machines was launched on February 15. The scheduled landing near the moon’s south pole would be the first lunar landing by a US spacecraft since NASA’s last Apollo mission in December 1972, and the first by a non-government entity.

“There were a lot of sleepless nights getting ready for this,” Steve Altemus, the co-founder and CEO of Intuitive Machines, said in an interview before the mission. Altemus was previously Nasa’s director of engineering and deputy director of the Johnson Space Center before he founded his company of around 90 employees in 2013.

The lander is a 14-foot (4.3-meter) hexagonal-shaped craft with six legs, and is targeted for a landing at crater Malapert A near the lunar south pole. Odysseus carries a payload of six NASA science instruments and technology demonstrations as part of the agency’s commercial lunar payload services initiative

The Odysseus is expected to land at 18:24 ET/23:24 GMT.

Intuitive Machines initially said it would land at 5:49 PM ET, then 5:30 PM, and this morning said it could land even earlier at 4:24 PM. But eventually, flight controllers decided to circle the Odysseus one more time before landing, delaying the event by two hours.

Welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the latest attempt to successfully soft-land the very first private lander on our nearest neighbor – the moon!

Last week, SpaceX’s Falcon rocket blasted off from Nasa’s Kennedy in the middle of the American night Space Center, sends Intuitive Machines’ lunar lander on its 230,000-mile (370,000 km) journey.

Today the Odysseus lander tries to make the dangerous descent. Houston-based Intuitive Machines’ goal of landing its 14-foot-tall, six-legged lander just 186 miles (300 km) shy of the moon’s south pole

Only five countries – the USA, Russia, China, India and Japan – have achieved a lunar landing and no private enterprise has yet done so. The US has not returned to the moon’s surface since the Apollo program ended more than five decades ago.

Stay tuned for what could be a nerve wracking ride…