Private US moon lander launched half century after last Apollo lunar mission
moon lander built by Houston-based aerospace company Intuitive Machines was launched from Florida early on Thursday on a mission to conduct the first U.S. lunar touchdown in more than a half-century and the first by a privately owned spacecraft.
The company's Nova-C lander, dubbed Odysseus, lifted off shortly after 1 a.m. EST (0600 GMT) atop a Falcon 9 rocket flown by Elon Musk' SpaceX from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.
A live NASA-SpaceX online video feed showed the two-stage, 25-story rocket roaring off the launch pad and streaking into the dark sky over Florida's Atlantic coast, trailed by a fiery yellowish plume of exhaust.
The launch, previously set for Wednesday morning, was postponed for 24 hours because of irregular temperatures detected in liquid methane used in the lander's propulsion system. SpaceX said the issue was later resolved.
Although considered an Intuitive Machines mission, the IM-1 flight is carrying six NASA payloads of instruments designed to gather data about the lunar environment ahead of NASA's planned return of astronauts to the moon later this decade.
Thursday's launch came a month after the lunar lander of another private firm, Astrobotic Technology, suffered a propulsion system leak on its way to the moon shortly after being placed in orbit on Jan. 8 by a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan rocket making its debut flight.
The failure of Astrobotic's Peregrine lander, which was also flying NASA payloads to
