The Mission of a Private American Spacecraft to the Moon Has Begun

More than half a century after Apollo landed on the Moon's surface, the first mission of a private American spacecraft to the Moon has begun. The Nova-C lander, known as Odyssey, built by Intuitive Machines in Houston, Texas, was launched into space shortly after 1 AM on Thursday, February 15, from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Odyssey took flight aboard a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket manufactured by Elon Musk's SpaceX. According to Reuters from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, a live NASA-SpaceX feed showed the two-stage, 25-story rocket lifting off from the launch pad into the dark sky over the Atlantic Ocean shores of Florida. About 48 minutes after launch, the lunar lander separated from the upper stage of the Falcon 9 at approximately 200 kilometers above the Earth's surface and headed toward the Moon. Moments later, mission operations officials in Houston received the first radio signals from Odyssey, indicating that the lander's automated process for powering up systems and orienting itself in space had begun. Although this space journey is considered a mission of Intuitive Machines, it carries six payloads from NASA designed to collect data about the lunar environment. NASA astronauts are expected to travel to the Moon again before the end of this decade. Thursday's launch occurred one month after another lunar lander built by the private company Astrobotic Technology experienced a propulsion system leak shortly after entering Earth orbit on January 8, preventing it from continuing its journey to the Moon. The failure of the Astrobotic Peregrine lander, which was also supposed to deliver NASA payloads to the Moon, marked the third failure of private companies in their attempts for a 'soft landing' on the lunar surface. Previously, attempts by two private space companies from Israel and Japan to land on the Moon had also failed. A Russian astronaut set a record for '878 days' living in space.