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First private spacecraft lands on moon in new era of commercial missions
Insights from NASA, Nature, and Business Insider
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The U.S.-made private lander Odysseus reached the lunar surface on Thursday, marking the first American touchdown on the moon in more than five decades.
The spacecraft, constructed by Intuitive Machines, is the first created by a private company to land on the moon. Nicknamed “Odie,” the robotic lander will scan the moon’s south pole ahead of an expected manned mission by NASA in 2026.
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NASA planning to send people back to moon
Astronauts are expected to return to the moon in 2026, more than 50 years after the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. NASA’s Artemis mission will focus on the moon’s south pole — a little-investigated region on the lunar surface that receives limited sunlight. Some areas are in permanent shadow, and scientists believe there is water ice present that could be mined, sustaining future astronauts that travel to the moon. “Lunar water ice is valuable from a scientific perspective and also as a resource, because from it we can extract oxygen and hydrogen for life support systems and fuel,” Jacob Bleacher, chief exploration scientist for NASA, said when the mission was announced.
Space exploration increasingly relying on private firms
NASA has contracted several private companies to help with the Artemis missions: SpaceX is designing one of the spacecrafts, Lockheed Martin is developing a rover, and Odie, on this latest landing, transported scientific materials to the lunar surface for the U.S. space agency. Private firms have also been launching their own moon missions in recent years — with some 100 trips planned over the next decade — signaling a new age of commercial space exploration, science journalist Alexandra Witze wrote in Nature. “A lot of people are looking at this optimistically, as the beginning of the furthering of expansion into space,” Stephen Indyk, director of space systems at Honeybee Robotics, told the journal.
