US company’s lunar lander heading to the Moon for landing attempt next week

Another private American company took a chance on the Moon on Thursday, a month after a rival’s lunar lander missed its target and crashed back.

NASA, the main sponsor of onboard experiments, is hoping for a successful moon landing next week as it seeks to revive the lunar economy ahead of astronaut missions.

SpaceX’s Falcon rocket lifted off in the middle of the night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, sending Intuitive Machines’ lunar lander on its way to the Moon, 230,000 miles (370,000 kilometers) away. The lander looked like a stunning six-pointed star jewel – each point a leg – as it successfully separated from the upper stage and drifted into the black void with the blue Earth far below.

If all goes well, a landing attempt would take place on February 22, after a day in lunar orbit.

Only five countries – the United States, Russia, China, India and Japan – have successfully landed on the Moon and no private company has yet managed to do so. The United States has not returned to the surface of the Moon since the end of the Apollo program more than fifty years ago.

“There were a lot of sleepless nights preparing for this,” Steve Altemus, co-founder and chief executive of Intuitive Machines, said before the flight.

The Houston-based company aims to land its 4.3-meter-tall, six-legged lander just 300 kilometers from the Moon’s south pole, the equivalent of landing in Antarctica on Earth. This region, full of craters and dangerous cliffs but potentially rich in frozen water, is where NASA plans to land astronauts later this decade. The space agency said its six navigation and technology experiments on the lander could help make the task easier.

NASA’s first entry into its commercial lunar delivery service — Astrobotic Technology’s Peregrine lander — stumbled shortly after liftoff in early January. A fuel tank rupture and massive leak caused the spacecraft to circle the Moon and re-enter the atmosphere 10 days after launch, breaking up and burning up over the Pacific.

Others arrived on the moon before being shipwrecked.

An Israeli nonprofit’s lander crashed in 2019. Last year, a Tokyo company saw its lander crash into the moon, followed by Russia’s crash landing.

Only the United States sent astronauts to the Moon, with Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt closing the program in December 1972. That was it for American moon landings until the short-lived Astrobotic test last month.

Intuitive Machines named its lander after Homer’s hero in “The Odyssey.”

“Good speed, Ulysses. Now let’s go make history,” said Trent Martin, vice president of space systems.

NASA is paying Intuitive Machines $118 million to conduct its latest round of experiments on the Moon. The company has also signed up its own clients, including Columbia Sportswear, which is testing a metal jacket fabric as a thermal insulator on the lander, and sculptor Jeff Koons, who is sending 125-inch lunar figurines into a transparent cube.

The lander also carries Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Eaglecam, which will take photos of the lander as they descend.

The spacecraft will cease operations after a week on the surface.

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