Private U.S. lander reaches lunar orbit

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A private U.S. lunar lander reached the moon and eased into a low orbit Wednesday, a day before it will attempt an even greater feat — landing on the gray, dusty surface.

A smooth touchdown would put the U.S. back in business on the moon for the first time since NASA astronauts closed out the Apollo program in 1972. The company, if successful, also would become the first private outfit to ace a moon landing.

Launched last week, Intuitive Machines' lander fired its engine on the back side of the moon while out of contact with Earth. Flight controllers at the company's Houston headquarters had to wait until the spacecraft emerged to learn whether the lander was in orbit or hurtling aimlessly away.

Intuitive Machines confirmed its lander, nicknamed Odysseus, was circling the moon with experiments from NASA and other clients. The lander is part of a NASA program to kickstart the lunar economy; the space agency is paying $118 million to get its experiments on the moon on this mission.

Today, controllers will lower the orbit from just under 60 miles to 6 miles — a crucial maneuver occurring again on the moon's far side — before aiming for a touchdown near the moon's south pole. It's a dicey place to land with all the craters and cliffs, but deemed prime real estate for astronauts since the permanently shadowed craters are believed to hold frozen water.

The moon is littered with wreckage from failed landings. Some missions never even got that far. Another U.S. company — Astrobotic Technology — tried to send a lander to the moon last month, but it didn't get there because of a fuel leak. The damaged lander came crashing back through the atmosphere, burning up over the Pacific. Past missions from various countries have all had varying degrees of success.

The Soviet Union's Luna 9 successfully touched down on the moon in 1966, after its predecessors crashed or missed the moon altogether. The U.S. followed four months later with Surveyor 1.

NASA clinched the space race with the Soviets in 1969 with a moon landing by Apollo 11's Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Twelve astronauts explored the surface over six missions, before the program ended with Apollo 17 in 1972. Still the only country to send humans to the moon, the U.S. hopes to return crews to the surface by the end of 2026 or so, a year after a lunar fly-around by astronauts.

China, in 2013, became the third country to successfully land on the moon, delivering a rover named Yutu, Chinese for jade rabbit. China followed with the Yutu-2 rover in 2019, this time touching down on the moon's unexplored far side — an impressive first. A sample return mission on the moon's near side in 2020 yielded nearly 4 pounds of lunar rocks and dirt. Another sample return mission should be launching soon, but this time to the far side.

In 2023, Russia tried for its first moon landing in nearly a half-century, but the Luna 25 spacecraft smashed into the moon. The country's previous lander — 1976's Luna 24 — not only landed, but returned moon rocks to Earth.

After its first lander slammed into the moon in 2019, India regrouped and launched Chandrayaan-3 (Hindi for moon craft) in 2023. The craft successfully touched down, making India the fourth country to score a lunar landing. The win came just four days after Russia's crash-landing.