Landing on the moon is not easy, but this week another private company will try.
Intuitive Machines plans to launch its spacecraft to the lunar surface early Wednesday, making the United States’ first soft landing since the last Apollo mission in 1972, the Washington Post reported Tuesday. If its efforts are successful, the Houston-based company would also become the first company to send a commercial spacecraft to the Moon.
“By expanding our ability to operate on the lunar surface, the mission paves the way for more ambitious efforts, including establishing a lunar base and exploring potential resources,” Intuitive Machines said in a statement.
The company’s Odysseus rover is expected to lift off at 12:57 a.m. ET on Wednesday and land on the lunar surface nine days later. It will launch into space aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, eventually separate from the rocket and land near the moon’s south pole. Odyssey carries several scientific payloads for NASA, which has awarded Intuitive Machines $118 million to deliver them to the lunar surface.
The government agency is working to return astronauts to the Moon as part of the $2.6 billion Artemis program. However, the effort got off to a rocky start: Astrobotic Technology attempted to send its spacecraft to the lunar surface last month, but suffered a fuel leak and was unable to complete its mission. Shortly afterward, NASA announced that two of its flights would be delayed to September 2025 and September 2026 at the earliest.
However, Intuitive Machines was pleased with the prospects of collaboration with Odysseus. “The car is ready,” company CEO Stefan Altemus told the newspaper in October. “It performs very well… We know what we’re up against. We’ve done beyond development testing to make sure. Have conducted extensive testing to ensure that the car performs as it was designed. Thanks to our reviews, we are confident that we”ve eliminated all these problems and we know how the car behaves .
Of course, space is unpredictable, and even the best laid plans can go wrong. Intuitive Machines hopes that Odysseus can weather any storms that lie ahead in the great unknown. From tomorrow we will see what the investigation can do.
