Houston's Intuitive Machines landed their Odysseus lander on the moon, becoming the first U.S.-built spacecraft to land on the moon landing in more than 50 years!
"Today, for the first time in more than half a century, the U.S. has returned to the moon," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said.
Odysseus began a slow descent towards 186 miles from the moon's south pole, the dark side of the moon, as video from the lander's on-board cameras cannot be transmitted back to Earth in real time, but the first pictures are expected within a half hour or so.
This is the first touchdown by a U.S.-built spacecraft since the Apollo 17 in 1972 and the first ever by a privately-built spacecraft. Only the governments of the United States, the Soviet Union, China, India and Japan have successfully put landers on the moon, as Odysseus was funded in part by NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.
The agency's goal is to kickstart development of new technologies and data that will be needed by Artemis astronauts planning to land near the moon's south pole later this decade.