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

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:

The NDL is a LIDAR-based (Light Detection and Ranging) sensor composed of an optical head with three small telescopes and a box with electronics and photonics. NDL uses lasers to provide extremely precise velocity and range (distance to the ground) sensing during the descent and landing of the lander. This instrument operates on the same principles of radar, similar to a police radar detector, but uses pulses of light from a laser instead of radio waves and with very high accuracy. This will enhance the capabilities of space vehicles to execute precision navigation and controlled soft landings.

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.

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.

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.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson added during the webcast: “Today for the first time in more than a half-century, the US has returned to the moon.”
“Today is a day that shows the power and promise of NASA’s commercial partnerships,” he added. “Congratulations to everyone involved in this great and daring quest.”

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.

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.

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.

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

“It’s white-knuckle time. Their ability to land is not with the radar, but with light pulses called Lidar — and it is on the blink,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told CNN’s Jake Tapper, less than an hour away from the estimated touchdown time.

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.

“At 6:10 (p.m. ET) they’re to do a controlled descent — they would waive that descent off for one more try at about 8:30 this evening. But that would be the last chance that they would have to land,” Nelson added.

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

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.

“There’s so much more to do on the moon — and learn on the moon — about living and working in space. If it takes geopolitical tensions to drive that to fruition, you know, that’s OK,” Altemus said.

“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.

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

NASA describes it like this:

“(A) relatively flat and safe region is within the heavily cratered southern highlands on the side of the Moon visible from Earth.”

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.

“(Commercial companies) brought that iterative, fail fast model with them. Get the product out there, let it blow up, figure out what you did wrong, fix it, and go again,” he said. “That is not the way the US government operates. Because if your project dies, your government career is screwed.”

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.

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:

Intuitive Machines, the Houston-based company that developed the Odysseus spacecraft under contract with NASA, estimates it has about an 80% chance of safely landing on the moon, according to CEO Stephen Altemus.

One advantage is that the company bore witness to some previous, failed attempts, he said.

“We’ve stood on the shoulders of everybody who’s tried before us,” said Altemus, adding that Intuitive Machines attempted to analyze the propulsion issue that plagued the Peregrine lander last month and ensured the same problem would not arise during Odysseus’ mission.

Even NASA isn’t expecting a 100% success rate for these early missions, which are carried out under the space agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, initiative.

“We’ve always viewed these initial CLPS deliveries as being kind of a learning experience,” said Joel Kearns, the deputy associate administrator for exploration in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, during a February 13 briefing. “We knew going into this … we didn’t believe that success was assured.”

Odysseus is expected to spend about seven days operating on the lunar surface before the landing site is plunged into lunar night, with cold temperatures rendering the spacecraft inoperable.

Tucked on board are six NASA science instruments, many of which were designed to collect data during Odysseus’ descent.

That’s not all that’s on board: “Odie” also packed art and commemorative objects for its journey.

Intuitive Machines, the Houston-based company behind the Odysseus lunar lander, has moved the projected landing time yet again.

It’s now 6:24 p.m. ET, according to an update on X.

The company announced that it opted to make one more lap around the moon before making its nail-biting swoop down to the surface.

That puts the landing two hours later than Intuitive Machines had most recently shared. The company has acknowledged the exact timing would be subject to change.

A livestream of the event is now expected to start at 5 p.m. ET.

Only a handful of countries have successfully landed vehicles on the moon in the more than 50 years since the United States and the Soviet Union achieved that milestone in 1966.

China, India and Japan all reached the moon with robotic vehicles for the first time in the 21st century. India and Japan each pulled off the monumental feat just within the past six months.

Now, the US Odysseus lunar lander, nicknamed “Odie” or IM-1, will attempt to land on the moon on Thursday.

Here is where India’s Chandrayaan-3 (2) and Japan’s SLIM (3) landed compared to where Odie is heading:

Experts have made the analogy that landing on the moon is as difficult as teeing off a golf ball in New York and aiming for a small hole in Los Angeles.

“That’s about accurate,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told CNN on Thursday morning.

Nelson said Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lander will face specific challenges at its landing site today near the moon’s south pole.

“It is pockmarked with all of these craters,” he explained.

But, we want to go regardless of the hazards “to see if there is water in abundance. Because if there’s water, there’s rocket fuel: hydrogen, and oxygen. And we could have a gas station on the south pole of the moon,” Nelson said.

The Odysseus lander, the spacecraft aiming to make a historic landing on the moon on Thursday, is roughly the size of a British telephone booth with legs attached, according to the company that made it.

Intuitive Machines is set to land the spacecraft near the moon’s south pole, an area of high interest in the space race. This region is suspected to be home to water ice that could one day be converted into drinking water for astronauts — or even rocket fuel. The south pole is also the same lunar region where NASA is seeking to land astronauts later this decade.

What’s on board: The lander, nicknamed “Odie,” will be equipped with six NASA payloads — an array of scientific instruments designed to test new technology or evaluate the lunar environment, such as a study of how the moon’s soil behaves during landing.

Also on board will be commemorative objects, including a sculpture representing the moon phases designed in consultation with Jeff Koons, and technology from private-sector companies, including Columbia Sportswear, which developed insulation material for the lander.

If all goes according to plan, Odysseus will spend seven days operating on the moon as the lunar lander basks in the sun. But as the landing zone moves into Earth’s shadow, experiencing lunar night, the spacecraft will be put to sleep.

Countries and companies worldwide are racing to the surface of the moon — for several critical reasons. 

So far, China, India and Japan are the only nations to have soft-landed vehicles on the moon in the 21st century. But there are more than 100 lunar missions planned to take place before 2030, according to the European Space Agency.

Here’s why:

Watch:

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Success is not guaranteed as the Odysseus lunar lander prepares to attempt to touch down on the moon on Thursday. If it fails, Odysseus, nicknamed “Odie,” would become the third lunar lander to meet a fiery demise on the moon in less than a year.

Russia’s first lunar lander mission in 47 years, Luna 25, failed in August 2023 when it crash-landed. Hakuto-R, a lander developed by Japan-based company Ispace, met a similar fate last April.

In February 1966, the Soviet Union’s Luna 9 became the first spacecraft to make a controlled, or “soft,” landing. The United States followed just four months later when its robotic Surveyor 1 spacecraft touched down on the moon’s surface.

Since then, only three other countries — China, India and Japan — have achieved such a milestone. All three reached the moon with robotic vehicles for the first time in the 21st century. India and Japan each pulled off the monumental feat within just the past six months.

Odysseus could also become the first spacecraft developed by a private company ever to make a soft landing — a feat that has so far remained out of reach for the commercial sector. Apart from Ispace’s Hakuto-R lander, Israeli company SpaceIL attempted to land its Beresheet spacecraft on the moon in 2019. But it crash-landed because of a technical glitch.

The Odysseus lunar lander may be just one small spacecraft among a fleet under development by NASA and the US private sector, but a successful moon landing today could serve as a powerful symbol of technological prowess in a renewed space race between the United States and China.

China has already put three vehicles on the moon over the past decade and has goals similar to the US in establishing a permanent base on the lunar surface.

There is plenty of room on the moon for both the US and China, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson told CNN’s Poppy Harlow this morning.

But the fraught geopolitical landscape on the moon is a big reason why the US has sought to update the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. The treaty outlines that space should remain a realm of peaceful exploration but has long been criticized as an outdated document.

The United States introduced a new set of principles, the Artemis Accords, in 2020.

“Now 36 countries have signed (the Artemis Accords) and it’s basically a declaration of our peaceful pledges as we go out and explore the moon,” Nelson said.

But China is not one of those signatories.

“Now, of course, we’re concerned about that because a lot of the so-called civilian space program with China … that is a lot of military as well,” Nelson added.

Even before Odysseus makes its thrilling plunge down to the lunar surface, the spacecraft is enduring a brutal environment as it circles the moon.

The spacecraft is expected to make around 12 complete laps around the moon, and each one puts the lander through wild temperature swings, according to a fact sheet from the company.

“When the lander is on the sunward side of the (lunar) orbit, the sun heats the lander on one side, but the Moon also bakes the other side of the spacecraft with reflected infrared radiation, so Odysseus is very warm,” according to the company. “Then, the lander passes into the lunar shadow, and the vehicle plunges into a deep cold regime and requires heater power drawn from batteries to keep systems warm.”

Lunar orbit also brings communications challenges.

As Odysseus orbits, ground controllers have about 75 minutes of communication with the spacecraft before it travels to the far side of the moon, where it’s out of reach for about 45 minutes before swinging back to the near side.

Intuitive Machines is a Houston-based company just up the road from NASA’s Johnson Space Center, or JSC. It was founded in 2013 by a trio of space enthusiasts:

The company reached a massive milestone in 2021 when NASA selected the company as a provider in its Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, program.

It’s one of several private-sector companies that have been tasked by the space agency to get robotic landers to the moon as NASA works on separate plans to return its astronauts.

The contract for this mission was originally worth under $80 million. But it was later renegotiated, and — all told — Intuitive Machines could receive up to $118 million from NASA for this mission.

The company also went public last year, via a reverse merger. Its stock has been on a tear recently amid its successes in space, surging up about 80% over the past five days as of Thursday afternoon.

Intuitive Machines shared several possible landing times for Odysseus over the past several days, and the projected touchdown has only moved earlier.

The company has announced a new landing time of 4:24 p.m. ET — more than an hour sooner than previously announced.

Intuitive Machines has acknowledged the landing time was subject to change.

The company shared the reason for the update: “Flight controllers commanded a lunar correction maneuver to raise Odysseus’ orbit overnight and updated the anticipated landing time,” according to a post on X.

The Odysseus lunar lander, nicknamed “Odie” or IM-1, is aiming to make the first touchdown of a US-made spacecraft on the moon in five decades on Thursday.

Its launch followed closely on the heels of a separate US lunar landing mission that failed in January. NASA has ramped up the development of robotic spacecraft via private partners to evaluate the lunar environment and identify key resources before it attempts to return astronauts to the moon later this decade.

Odie’s journey to the moon: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket fired Odie into Earth’s orbit last week, blazing to speeds topping 24,600 miles per hour (about 40,000 kilometers per hour), according to Intuitive Machines, the Houston-based company that developed the spacecraft under contract with NASA through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.

After burning through its fuel, the rocket detached from Odie, leaving the lunar lander to fly solo through space. The robotic explorer then consulted an onboard map of the stars so it could orient itself in space, pointing its solar panels toward the sun’s rays to charge its batteries.

The spacecraft entered orbit around the moon, which is roughly 250,000 miles (about 400,000 kilometers) away from Earth, on Wednesday morning, according to the company.

The first images from the Odysseus lunar lander provided a view of Earth from space as the craft made its way to the moon. After being launched last week, the lander is aiming to land on the moon’s surface on Thursday.

More images to come: The spacecraft, nicknamed “Odie” or IM-1, also houses a camera system called EagleCam that was developed by students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. The device is set to pop off of the lunar lander as it approaches the surface and capture images of the vehicle’s descent.

“Hopefully, we’ll get a bird’s-eye view of that landing to share with the public,” Intuitive Machines CEO Stephen Altemus said.

The Odysseus lunar lander, nicknamed “Odie,” is on a scouting mission of sorts to the moon. The spacecraft is designed to assess the lunar environment ahead of NASA’s current plan to return a crewed mission to the moon through the Artemis program in late 2026.

If the landing is successful on Thursday, Odie is expected to operate for seven days on the lunar surface before darkness falls on the landing site at the moon’s south pole, plunging it into freezing temperatures.

Packed on board the lunar lander are six NASA science and technology payloads. They include a radio receiver system that will study lunar plasma, which is created by solar winds and other charged particles raining down on the moon’s surface.

Other payloads will test technology that could be used on future lunar landing missions, such as a new sensor that could potentially help guide precision landings.

The Odysseus lunar lander is aiming to make history on Thursday — but landing on the moon will be a dangerous feat.

If the landing fails, it will join a growing list of missions that have unsuccessfully sought a lunar touchdown. Last month, the first US-built lunar lander to launch in five decades, Astrobotic Technology’s Peregrine, was hampered by a critical fuel leak. That came after two failed missions from other countries in 2023: one from Russia and another from a company based in Japan.

China, India and Japan are so far the only nations to have soft-landed vehicles on the moon in the 21st century.

A phone booth-size spacecraft called Odysseus, or IM-1, is set to take on a challenge no vehicle launched from the United States has attempted in more than 50 years: landing on the moon. The last time the US landed a spacecraft on the moon’s surface was its robotic Surveyor 1 in 1966.

But the lunar landers of the 21st century, like Odysseus, are attempting to accomplish many of the same goals the US had during the space race at a small fraction of the price.

At the peak of the Apollo program, NASA’s budget comprised over 4% of all government spending. Today, the space agency’s budget is one-tenth the size, accounting for only 0.4% of all federal spending, even as it seeks to return American astronauts to the moon under the Artemis program.

NASA is attempting to drastically reduce prices by outsourcing the design of small, robotic spacecraft to the private sector through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, or CLPS. If the landing is successful, Odysseus will be the first commercial spacecraft ever to soft-land on the moon.

“We’re going a thousand times further than the International Space Station,” Intuitive Machines President and CEO Steve Altemus told CNN. “And then, on top of that, you set the target: Do it for $100 million when in the past it’s been done for billions of dollars.”