First Privately Owned Spacecraft Lands on the Moon!

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News Uptake

A spacecraft owned by a private Texas-based company has created history by successfully landing on the Moon.

The Nova-C Odysseus lander, built by a spaceflight company Intuitive Machines (IM) landed on the south pole area of the Moon on Thursday.

Though it's target was to land on Malapert A, a crater 186 miles from the Moon’s south pole.

The Intuitive Machines control room recorded 6.40pm eastern time of the landing.

As per Nasa, the official landing time of the craft was 6.23pm ET.

Just before landing, the spacecraft suffered a problem in its system which was designed to assess a safe landing zone.

The sensors aboard the spacecraft on one of the Nasa instruments was repurposed to sort out the problem.

After America's first mission to the Moon about fifty years ago, Odysseus is the first US Moon landing.

Intuitive Machines wrote on X- "Odysseus has a new home!"

While Nasa wrote- "Your order was delivered to the Moon!" and said that it will help in future exploration of the Moon.