But now, Intuitive Machines, a company based in Houston, is planning to launch its spacecraft to the moon early on Wednesday, setting up a possible landing later this month. If successful, it will be the first landing for the United States since the last of the Apollo missions in 1972 and the first commercial spacecraft ever to touch down on the lunar surface. The company’s phone-booth-size lander, Odysseus, is aiming for near the moon’s south pole, a region that is of particular interest to NASA because of the existence of water in the form of ice in its permanently shadowed craters.
Although the spacecraft is owned and operated by Intuitive Machines, NASA has several science experiments on board and is paying the company $118 million to deliver them to the surface. The flight is part of a $2.6 billion space agency program designed to send a fleet of robotic spacecraft, operated not by NASA but private industry, to the moon over the next several years to bolster the space agency’s attempt to land astronauts there.
The effort demonstrates the growing role the commercial space industry has assumed in space exploration. NASA now relies on contractors not just to fly cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station, but also to develop the spacecraft that will land astronauts on the moon and the spacesuits they will wear while there. It is also looking to the corporate sector to build the habitats that could eventually replace the space station in Earth orbit.
A successful lunar landing by a commercial vehicle would mark a significant milestone in the exploration of space by private enterprise, which NASA hopes will eventually help open up new economic and scientific activity on and around the moon. “By advancing our capabilities to operate on the lunar surface, the mission sets the stage for more ambitious endeavors, including the establishment of lunar bases and the exploration of potential resources,” Intuitive Machines said in a statement.
All of that remains years away, and landing on the moon is extremely difficult. In the first of the uncrewed flights to the lunar surface, a spacecraft developed by Astrobotic, a company based in Pittsburgh, suffered a problem with its propulsion system last month and sprang a leak, preventing it from reaching the lunar surface. Shortly afterward, a spacecraft operated by the Japanese space agency landed softly, making Japan the fifth country to land on the moon’s surface. But the spacecraft ended up on its side.
NASA’s moon program has had some recent setbacks, as well. The space agency had been hoping that a quartet of astronauts would fly around the moon in its Orion spacecraft later this year, a mission, known as Artemis II, that would be somewhat similar to the Apollo 8 flight in 1968. But last month, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the flight will be delayed to September 2025 because the space agency needs to further study Orion’s heat shield, which showed more charring than anticipated.
Artemis III, the flight that will transport astronauts to the surface, was also pushed back from 2025 to no earlier than September 2026. This time, the issue is delays in SpaceX’s development of its Starship spacecraft, which is supposed to ferry the crew to and from the lunar surface. Nelson said there are also delays with developing the spacesuits the astronauts will wear on the moon. That effort is being led by Axiom Space, another…
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