Odysseus becomes first US spacecraft to land on moon in over 50 years

NASA's Navigation Doppler Lidar.

Odysseus has now officially made history with its successful lunar touchdown — and none of it could have happened without some fast work from engineers on the ground and a breath-catching save from a NASA payload.

Before descent, Intuitive Machines, which developed the Odysseus lunar lander, revealed crucial pieces of the vehicle’s navigation equipment were not working.

Fortunately, NASA — which considers itself one of many customers on this mission — had an experimental instrument already on board Odysseus that could be swapped in to make up for the malfunctioning equipment.

Engineers were able to bypass Odysseus’ broken pieces and land using two lasers that are part of NASA’s Navigation Doppler Lidar, or NDL, payload.

Here’s how the NDL is described in IM-1’s press kit:

After some intense waiting, Intuitive Machines, the company behind the Odysseus lunar landing mission, has confirmed the spacecraft is “upright and starting to send data.”

That’s a major milestone.

An upright landing potentially puts Odysseus in a better position than even Japan’s SLIM “Moon Sniper” mission. SLIM was deemed a success as it made a soft touchdown, but later was revealed to have landed in a position that left its solar panels pointed in the wrong direction, causing that spacecraft to quickly lose power.

“Right now, we are working to downlink the first images from the lunar surface,” Intuitive Machines said in a post on social media platform X.

Jeff Koons' "Moon Phases" is seen on the Odysseus lunar lander as it flies over the near side of the moon on Wednesday.

Exchanging the gallery space for a transparent box in space, the American artist Jeff Koons now has one of his works of art on the moon.

On Thursday, a sculpture called “Moon Phases” hitched a ride on the Odysseus lunar lander as it touched down on the moon. It marked the United States’ first landing on the lunar surface in more than 50 years.

The artwork depicts 125 mini-sculptures of the moon contained in a box, measuring about one inch in diameter. “Moon Phases” shows 62 phases of the moon as seen from Earth, 62 phases visible from other viewpoints in space, and one lunar eclipse.

Jeff Koons holds "Moon Phases" before it was attached to the lunar lander.

Each sculpture is inscribed with the name of a groundbreaking figure in human history, including Aristotle, David Bowie, Leonardo da Vinci, Gandhi, Billie Holiday, Gabriel García Márquez, Andy Warhol and Virginia Woolf. Koons “has drawn inspiration from the Moon as a symbol of curiosity and determination,” according to a statement from his gallery, Pace.

But the art market wouldn’t be able to do much with far-flung sculptures “exhibited” in outer space, so there’s a commercial component to Koons’ project as well. Pace Verso, the NFT wing of Pace, is also offering NFTs of each sculpture, while Koons has produced larger, coinciding physical sculptures of his “Moon Phases” to remain on Earth.

NASA posted a reaction to the moon mission on social media, saying “Your order was delivered… to the Moon!”

“(Intutive 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,” the space agency posted on X, the website formerly known as Twitter.

Applause and celebrations could be heard on the Intuitive Machines webcast of the event before the live coverage concluded.

CNN is standing by for additional updates on the spacecraft’s status.

Intuitive Machines mechanics, friends and family cheer after confirmation the lunar lander made a touchdown on the moon, in this still from the webcast.

The US-made Odysseus lunar lander has made a touchdown on the moon, surpassing its final key milestones — and the odds — to become the first commercial spacecraft to accomplish such a feat, but the condition of the lander remains in question.

Intuitive Machines, however, says the mission has been successful.

“I know this was a nail-biter, but we are on the surface, and we are transmitting,” Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus just announced on the webcast. “Welcome to the moon.”

Odysseus is the first vehicle launched from the United States to land on the moon’s surface since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

Mission controllers from Intuitive Machines, the Houston-based company that developed the robotic explorer, confirmed the lander reached the lunar surface Thursday evening.

The uncrewed spacecraft traveled hundreds of thousands of miles from its Florida launch site at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to the moon before making its final, perilous swoop to the lunar surface.

The Odysseus lunar lander, nicknamed “Odie” or IM-1, is on the moon’s surface and transmitting, Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus just announced on the webcast.

“I know this was a nail-biter, but we are on the surface, and we are transmitting,” Altemus said. “Welcome to the moon.”

The exact state of the lander is not yet clear. But the company has confirmed it has made contact.

Mission control is seen in this still from the livestreamed webcast.

Lunar landing missions typically offer moments of uncertainty. And though we’re waiting for confirmation of communications, there have been some promising updates:

“We have an onboard fault detection system for our communications that after 15 minutes with lack of communication will power cycle the radios and then after that for another 15 minutes it will then switch antenna pairs, so we have some time here to evaluate,” an Intuitive Machines flight controller said on the stream.

“We’re not dead yet,” they emphasized.

The company has also confirmed a “faint signal” — potentially representing signs of life from the spacecraft.

The 6:24 p.m. ET landing time has come and gone.

Intuitive Machines knew it couldn’t make contact with the lander right at the moment of touchdown, but expected to potentially have an answer shortly after.

It’s now a waiting game to see whether Intuitive Machines can establish communications.

The webcast just announced that the engine is “nominal” — aerospace parlance for working as expected.

The spacecraft is functioning all on its own.

The expected landing time is 6:24 p.m. ET, though there could be wiggle room.

We could learn right at that time if Odysseus made a safe touchdown, or it could take a few minutes, according to the webcast.

It’s go time for this lunar lander.

The spacecraft is lighting its engine for an 11-minute burn. This is one of the last milestones before touchdown.

The decision to swoop in for landing comes despite the fact that the vehicle’s sensors — or rangefinders — weren’t working. Teams on the ground were able to troubleshoot the issue by reprogramming Odysseus to rely on an experimental NASA payload on board: The Navigation Doppler Lidar.

During this burn, the lander will slow down by about 1,800 meters per second, aiming to hit the brakes for a gentle touchdown at 6:24 p.m. ET.

From here, the spacecraft is fully autonomous and there’s no communication with the vehicle until landing.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson speaks to CNN's Jake Tapper on Thursday.

The Odysseus lunar lander is experiencing some issues as it gets closer to making its descent to the surface.

Odysseus’ own system wasn’t working exactly as intended.

But there are six NASA payloads on board the rover, nicknamed “Odie,” and one of them is a Lidar. Nelson said scientists are trying to patch that NASA Lidar to the spacecraft and its control system.

If that doesn’t work, “they would keep working the problem,” he said.

Early indications were that the spacecraft was successfully using the NASA Lidar, according to the Intuitive Machines livestream.

Intuitive Machines CEO Stephen Altemus talks about the IM-1 lunar lander on October 3, 2023.

The CEO of the company attempting to land a spacecraft on the moon Thursday said a little competition with China is not a bad thing.

More than five decades ago, the Apollo program was created because of the space race with the Soviet Union. Today, the United States is aiming to go back to the moon with a robotic explorer — and stay there. The US is aiming to land the Odysseus spacecraft near the moon’s South Pole — an area where both the US and China want to develop a moon base.

Intuitive Machines CEO Stephen Altemus told CNN on Thursday that this new kind of space race is what is going to spur progress.

“To be a company like Intuitive Machines in the forefront of landing on the moon and think of our competitor is China? That’s crazy,” he added.

In the last decade, China has sent three vehicles to the surface of the moon. The United States has not landed a robotic rover on the moon in more than 50 years.

Malapert A

Odysseus is heading for a landing site near Malapert A, an impact crater near the moon’s south pole.

NASA describes it like this:

The space agency said it chose this landing site for Intuitive Machines’ first mission because it wanted to learn more about the lunar environment and how communications function in this area.

And there’s a key reason why: NASA wants to scout the lunar south pole because the space agency believes it’s the best location to set up a future astronaut base.

An apparent issue with Odysseus’ navigation systems will force the lander to rely on experimental technology.

“Intuitive Machines made the decision to reassign the primary navigation sensors from Odysseus….to use the sensors on NASA’s Navigation Doppler Lidar,” according to the webcast.

The NDL payload is an experimental technology that aimed to test out how future landers would make more precise landings on the moon. It’s designed to shoot laser beams to the ground to give exact measurements of speed and direction of flight, according to Farzin Amzajerdian, NASA’s principal investigator for the instrument.

But it’ll serve more than an experimental role as Odysseus heads to the moon.

“They did some checks, and they’re performing very well,” according to Gary Jordan, a NASA communications manager, on the livestream.

Before it attempts to land on the moon, the lunar lander Odysseus, or IM-1, needs to slow its speed by about 4,026 miles per hour (about 6,500 kilometers per hour) to have a soft touchdown.

The spacecraft is on track to land around 6:24 p.m. ET Thursday near the lunar south pole.

Success is not guaranteed. Overall, more than half of all lunar landing attempts have ended in failure — tough odds for a feat humanity first pulled off nearly 60 years ago.

While technology has advanced in the past five decades, the fundamental challenges of landing on the moon remain the same. Here’s what it will have to overcome:

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Odysseus’ descent won’t go exactly as Intuitive Machines previously mapped out.

“This is a dynamic situation … We’ll update you later in the broadcast,” said Gary Jordan, a communication manager at NASA, on the livestream.

Jordan added that an engine burn the company chose to execute overnight eliminated the need to perform a 10-second “deorbit insertion” burn, or DOI.

The spacecraft is now expected to continue decreasing its altitude over the next hour until “the breaking burn,” according to the webcast.

Odysseus can’t offer live footage of its landing attempt. The spacecraft isn’t equipped with a video recorder capable of sharing its journey.

But Intuitive Machines will be sharing computer-generated graphics that are based on data delivered directly from the robotic explorer. So while it’s not a live look, what appears on the livestream should be a fairly close representation of what the spacecraft is currently doing in lunar orbit.

That is, until about 10 minutes before landing.

After that, we won’t be seeing live data as Odysseus begins its perilous final descent. But, if all goes well, there should be only about a 15-second delay before flight controllers confirm whether the spacecraft made it to the surface safely, according to Intuitive Machines.

The livestream is underway and you can watch at the top of this page.

This post has been updated to reflect the livestream is underway.

Intuitive Machines’ IM-1 lander, also called Odysseus or “Odie,” is mere miles from the lunar surface as it aims to make history — becoming the first commercial spacecraft to soft-land on the moon.

Odysseus is expected to make first contact with the moon’s surface around 6:24 p.m. ET. The vehicle will use its methane-fueled engine on board to steer toward the surface and rapidly reduce its speed by 4,000 miles per hour (about 6,400 kilometers per hour).

Here’s what will happen in space:

“Those are the most dynamic times,” Intuitive Machines CEO told CNN in an interview earlier this month. “And those are the ones that we’re going to be just on the edge of our seat.”

The companies and governments dashing for the moon today are aiming for cheaper price points as they implement modern technology.

That’s the underlying goal behind NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, or CLPS (pronounced “clips”), which sponsored Intuitive Machines and the Odysseus lander for this mission.

And the companies participating in CLPS, including Intuitive Machines, are OK with a bit of risk and imperfection, according to Greg Autry, the director of space leadership at Arizona State University’s Thunderbird School of Global Management.

For its part, even NASA acknowledges its partners may not have a 100% success rate on these early missions.

Already there are additional CLPS missions lined up for later this year:

That said, a successful landing today would certainly mark a welcome win for this nascent NASA program and Intuitive Machines.

Intuitive Machines Nova-C lunar lander is docked at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on February 13. 

Odysseus has already made a bit of history on its journey through space.

The vehicle is powered by a single engine that is fueled by liquid oxygen, or LOX, and liquid methane, which are tricky propellants because they have to remain at super-chilled temperatures.

The spacecraft is also the first to ever use those fuels while in orbit.

Last week offered some nail-biting moments when Intuitive Machines opted to delay the first attempt to ignite the engine, which was expected the afternoon of February 15, saying communications outages were impacting ground controllers’ ability to collect crucial data about how this novel engine performed.

But onlookers breathed a sigh of relief the next day when Intuitive Machines confirmed the engine came to life without a hitch.

But why did the company take a chance on using these propellants for such a risky mission? Intuitive Machines cites two reasons for the choice: