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'Welcome to the moon': Spacecraft with New Mexico ties successfully lands on surface of the moon
After a two-hour delay and a nail-biting couple of minutes as crews waited for a signal, the lunar spacecraft Odysseus successfully landed on the moon.
This is the first time a private company has made a trip to the moon, as Intuitive Machines took equipment for NASA on the 23,000-mile trek.
"Your order was delivered... to the Moon," said NASA in a social media post celebrating the landing.
The uncrewed lander ended its week-long journey shortly before 4:30 p.m. Mountain Time Thursday when it touched down on the moon.
The two-hour delay was the result of controllers choosing to "exercise an additional orbit," a tweet from Intuitive Machines stated.
The company relied on laser technology that it tested multiple times at Spaceport America in southern New Mexico in 2021 and 2022.
The equipment NASA sent up will, "prepare us for future human exploration of the Moon under #Artemis," America's space agency said in their post.
Flight controllers chose to exercise an additional orbit before starting the IM-1 Mission landing sequence. The new anticipated landing time is 1724 CST.
— Intuitive Machines (@Int_Machines) February 22, 2024
We expect the landing stream to start on the IM-1 web page and NASA TV at 1600 CST. The content on both streams is identical.…
Your order was delivered… to the Moon! 📦@Int_Machines' uncrewed lunar lander landed at 6:23pm ET (2323 UTC), bringing NASA science to the Moon's surface. These instruments will prepare us for future human exploration of the Moon under #Artemis. pic.twitter.com/sS0poiWxrU
— NASA (@NASA) February 22, 2024
