Nows and Forevers

The United States is back on the Moon for the first time since 1972. And, for the first time, it’s a private company that’s leading the way.

Inituitive Machines’ Odysseus lander touched down on Thursday evening after a journey from Cape Canaveral, a launch aboard a SpaceX rocket and then the trip to lunar orbit and then, history.

Amazing what we can do.

I followed the last hour or so of the landing, as Odysseus initiated a deb orbit burn and then headed to the surface. There was already a change in the mission, when something didn’t work so they had to improve with the sensors that help it navigate. The webcast was tense and, after the jury-rig for navigation, there were several uncertain moments when it wasn’t clear whether Odysseus had survived.

But then a first signal was heard. Intuitive Machines had successfully landed Odysseus on the Moon.

Amazing what we can do.

I’ve been following the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, a public-private partnership with NASA to make the Moon more accessible, for a while. I’ve been writing about the race to put a private mission on the Moon since about 2013, starting with the heat of the Google Lunar XPrize competition back then. I’ve written a fair amount about Astrobotic, a Pittsburgh-based company that had formerly been a Lunar XPrize competitor and had always had the long vision of commercializing space. Intuitive Machines was founded around that time out of Houston, and it’s become a public company since then.

Astrobotic, unfortunately, wasn’t able to complete its mission to the Moon earlier this year, after a propellant leak doomed the lander. It was bittersweet to write this story in January about what happened and Astrobotic’s next steps, because it was so close and they had gone through so much. But Intuitive Machines’ success, as well as Astrobotic’s next try, is what is going to start to change space exploration.

We’re one step closer to the day when the Moon and space will be much more accessible places to live and work. I won’t live to see its full potential. I’ve been waiting since the Apollo missions of the early 1970s to see this. But I am confident it will happen.