Do you know how far the space industry in the U.S. has come? Let me share with you.

It’s been over 50 years since a U.S. government spacecraft has landed on the moon. 

50 years!

But on Thursday, February 22, 2024 a privately funded spacecraft from the private company Intuitive Machines landed successfully on the surface of the moon. 

I say “private” company, because they aren’t a government agency, but the company is actually publicly traded on the Nasdaq exchange under the ticket symbol LUNR. Intuitive Machines began trading on Nasdaq on February 13, 2023 after merging with a SPAC named Inflection Point Acquisition Corp. that already traded on the Nasdaq.

This is a big deal because recent government moon missions haven’t fared as lucky in recent months. 

First there was Russia’s first lunar mission in decades last August 22, 2023 that crashed into the moon, then we had India who successfully landed on the moon on August 23, 2024 with their spacecraft and small rover but when it got too cold both the lander and rover froze to death and never woke up again, then Japan “landed” (and I say that with sarcasm) on January 19, 2024 but didn’t stick the landing and fell over resulting in the spacecraft not receiving all of the solar energy it needed.

The Odysseus mission wasn’t without its own drama. Just before the spacecraft made its descent to the moon a crucial piece of the vehicle’s navigation equipment stopped working.

In came NASA to the rescue by reconfiguring an experimental instrument they were flying on board Odysseus, that could be swapped in to make up for the malfunctioning equipment. They were successfully able to land the spacecraft using two lasers that are part of NASA’s Navigation Doppler Lidar payload.

Yeah NASA!

As of the time of writing this post officials from Intuitive Machines are still awaiting the spacecraft Odysseus’ first images to be transmitted from the surface of the moon, but they did release a pretty sweet shot of the spacecraft’s landing approach.

Odysseus becomes first US spacecraft to land on moon in over 50 years