Lander ‘alive and well’ after company scores first US moon landing since Apollo era

The latest moon landing was reported to be “alive and well” a day after the first US landing in half a century, but flight controllers were still trying to get a better handle on its bearings.

Intuitive Machines reported Friday that it is communicating with its lander, Odysseus, and sending commands to receive science data. But he noted: “We continue to learn more about vehicle-specific information” regarding location, overall health and positioning.

A Houston company was shooting it. South PoleMalapert is closer to a crater, closer to the pole than anyone else so that NASA can explore the area before astronauts show up later this decade.

With Thursday’s touchdown, Intuitive Machines became the first private business to pull off a moon landing, a feat previously accomplished by only five countries. The mission was sponsored in large part by NASA, with experiments on board. NASA paid $118 million for the launch as part of a program aimed at jump-starting the lunar economy.

One of NASA’s experiments was called into use when the lander’s navigation system failed in the last few hours before touchdown. The lander took an extra lap around the moon to allow time for a last-minute switch in NASA’s laser system.

“The Audi is a scrapper,” mission director Tim Crane said late Thursday via X, formerly Twitter.

Another experiment didn’t go so well. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s EagleCam—a set of six cameras—was to be deployed 30 seconds before touchdown so that it could capture images from Odysseus’s touchdown period. Eagle Cam landed, instead, still attached to the lander.

A university spokesman explained that “unforeseen events” had to modify the original plan during the final orbit.

Intuitive Machines was the second company to reach the moon as part of NASA’s commercial lunar missions program. Last month, Pittsburgh’s astrobotic technology gave it a shot, but a fuel leak on the lander cut the mission short and the craft crashed back to Earth.

As of Thursday, the U.S. had not landed on the moon since Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmidt had shut down NASA’s fame. Landing on the moon program in December 1972. NASA’s new effort to return astronauts to the Moon has been named Artemis after Apollo’s legendary twin sister. gave First landing of the Artemis crew Planned for 2026 at the earliest.

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