America Back on the Moon!

In more than half a century, an American spacecraft is back on the moon.

American private space company Intuitive Machines won a contract with NASA, of delivering special scientific instruments to the lunar surface. Their lander, Odysseus, just landed on the moon. The last time an American made spacecraft was on the moon was in 1972, with Apollo 17, the last manned lunar mission.

When the lander first made contact with the lunar surface, in Houston, they reported that a faint signal from the lander had been detected. After a while, the company was able to confirm that the lander has indeed successfully made contact with the moon.

Although this landing is much more simple when compared to Apollo (where the first man walked on the moon), it shows that NASA is gearing up for more spaceflight aimed at the moon.

Intuitive Machines is one several companies that NASA has contract to send instruments to the moon, which will try to scout out the lunar surface ahead of the return of NASA astronauts (Artemis). For this mission, NASA paid Intuitive Machines $118 million to deliver six instruments. This includes a stereo cameras that aims to capture lunar dust that flies as Odysseus is making a landing.

However, other companies also contracted Intuitive machines for other cargo. This included a project from college students in Daytona Beach, Florida, and an art project.

After the spacecraft entered lunar orbit, the spacecraft had moved to a higher altitude, and then it had to unexpectedly take another lap around the moon. This delayed the initial landing time by 2 hours, where then the lander fired its thrusters and began a soft landing.

With the successful landing of the spacecraft, NASA aims to continue on with more affordable space missions. Typically, NASA would build their own spacecraft, and this would increase the price. However, with this new contracting method, NASA is able to save the price on these missions.

Before Neil Armstrong first took step on the moon, NASA had sent a bunch of spacecraft to the Moon, to validate the landing techniques and examine the properties of the soil. This allowed for scientists to be confident about where the astronauts would, and they could easily fix any potential issues before the launch.

NASA will likely aim to do the same, and especially since it is significantly cheaper than if NASA were to do it by themself (estimated at around $500 million to $1 billion).