US nears attempt at first moon landing in half century with private robot spacecraft
By Steve Gorman and Joey Roulette
(Reuters) -A spacecraft built and flown by Houston-based company Intuitive Machines sailed around the moon on Thursday to attempt the first U.S. touchdown on the lunar surface in more than half a century and the first ever entirely by the private sector.
The six-legged robot lander, dubbed Odysseus, was due to begin the final descent from lunar orbit with a blast of its main engine about an hour before landing, with touchdown anticipated at 6:24 p.m. EST (2324 GMT) on Thursday, according to the company's latest flight plan.
The vehicle, targeting a crater named Malapert A near the moon's south pole, is carrying a suite of scientific instruments and technology demonstrations for NASA and several commercial customers designed to operate for seven days on solar energy before the sun sets over the polar landing site.
The NASA payload will focus on collecting data on space weather interactions with the moon's surface, radio astronomy and other aspects of the lunar environment for future landers and NASA's planned return of astronauts later in the decade.
The uncrewed spacecraft has been circling the moon about 57 miles (92 km) above the surface since reaching orbit on Wednesday, six days after it was launched by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Odysseus remained «in excellent health» as it continued to orbit the moon, roughly 239,000 miles (384,000 km) from Earth, transmitting flight data and lunar images to Intuitive Machines' mission control center in Houston, the company said on Wednesday.
If the landing succeeds, the IM-1 mission would represent the first controlled descent to the lunar surface by a U.S. spacecraft since Apollo 17 in
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