The US is about to land on the moon for the first time in more than 50 years

After numerous failed attempts by various companies, an American company wants… Thursday (from 11:49 PM Swiss time) attempt again the first commercial moon landing in space history. If the landing is successful, it would also be the first – albeit unmanned – American moon landing since the ‘Apollo’ missions more than fifty years ago.

The “Nova-C” lander from the American company Intuitive Machines is expected to land softly in the southern part of the Earth’s satellite. He is nicknamed ‘Odysseus’. The lander is about the size of an old-fashioned British telephone box, has aluminum legs, weighs about 700 kilograms and can transport about 130 kilograms of cargo. NASA has occupied much of it with research equipment and other items, while commercial companies have secured the rest for their projects. The American artist Jeff Koons also sent 125 miniature stainless steel sculptures.

“Nova-C” was launched a week ago from the Cape Canaveral spaceport in the US state of Florida. The means of transport was a ‘Falcon 9’ rocket from technology billionaire Elon Musk’s space company SpaceX. After the launch, Intuitive Machines regularly provided information about the “excellent” condition of “Odysseus” and published photos.

The mission is part of NASA’s CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) program. With this program, the American space agency wants to collect as much knowledge as possible relatively cheaply and efficiently on its own way back to the moon by awarding contracts for moon landings to private companies and working with them. In total, the ‘CLPS’ program has been budgeted for around 2.6 billion dollars (about 2.4 billion euros) by 2028.

Intuitive Machines received approximately $77 million for the ‘Nova-C’ mission. The company, based in Houston, Texas, was founded in 2013 by, among others, American-Iranian entrepreneur Kam Ghaffarian, who is also behind the company Axiom Space, which just sent astronauts to the ISS space station on a commercial mission.

Moon landings are seen as technically very demanding and often go wrong. This year alone, two planned landings have turned out differently than hoped: the American company Astrobotic, based in Pittsburgh, sent the ‘Peregrine’ capsule in January – also as part of NASA’s ‘CLPS’ program. Shortly after take-off, problems arose due to a malfunction in the propulsion system. The engineers were able to temporarily stabilize the capsule, but the goal of landing on the moon had to be abandoned. A few days later, ‘Peregrine’ burned up in Earth’s atmosphere.

Shortly afterwards, the lander “SLIM” (Smart Lander for Investigating Moon) of the Japanese space agency Jaxa landed gently on the moon, but initially had problems with the energy supply. “SLIM” could only be put into use after days of power failure. This makes Japan the fifth country – after the US, Russia, China and India – to successfully land unmanned on the moon. Last April, a Japanese company with a similar mission failed. (sda/dpa)