Intuitive Machines has become the first commercial firm to land a spacecraft safely on the Moon.The Odysseus spacecraft will spend the next seven days conducting scientific observations and more.
While humans have become quite adept at landing spacecraft on the likes of Mars and the Moon, this landing by Intuitive Machines wasn’t without issues. According to, the final descent of the spacecraft was fraught with problems. After discovering an issue with the navigation system, ground teams had to switch to an untested landing system.
Seven days of science isn’t much but this is due to where the spacecraft landed. Odysseus has landed near the Moon’s South Pole at Malpert A, a crater 69km wide. While this region of the celestial body is said to contain water ice and other minerals astronauts could leverage for a base in the future, the region is also shrouded in darkness. Given that most spacecraft require solar energy to operate, being ensconced in darkness makes that difficult.
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