The spacecraft Odysseus – owned by US company Intuitive Machines – has blasted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida and is heading to the Moon on a mission to find potential water sources.
The launch is significant as it is the first time a rocket launched by a private company will have landed on the Moon. All previous landings have been made by national space agencies.
However, while it is a private mission, Nasa, the US space agency, has funded it. The agency has taken to encouraging commercial missions to expand its reach in space.
The launch took place at 01.05EST. It was the third attempt to launch Odysseus; in January bad weather prevented the launch, while earlier in the week, irregular methane temperatures stopped it.
But this time the launch was successful. It blasted off on top of a Falcon 9 rocket made by SpaceX. The first stage of the rocket was released a few minutes later as planned and returned to Earth.
The hope is that the rocket will now land safely, about 186 miles from the Moon’s South pole. This area is of interest to scientists as it is thought there could be frozen water there.
Once there, the plan is for Intuitive Machines’ moon lander, Nova-C – a hexagonal cylinder with six legs – to be deployed, which is carrying scientific instruments for Nasa. One set will measure how the craft landing on the Moon affects the surface and how much dust it sends up. Another set will bounce back laser beams fired from Earth. The mission is planned to last about a week.
The landing is set to be captured by a camera that will be thrown off the craft before it lands.
Intuitive machines plan to send a second craft to this area of the Moon in March, with the intention of drilling for frozen water.
