Another private US company has taken a shot at the Moon, launching a month after a rival’s lunar lander missed its mark and came crashing back to Earth.
SpaceX’s Falcon rocket blasted off in the middle of the night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, dispatching Texas-based company Intuitive Machines’ lunar lander on its way to the Moon.
If all goes well, a touchdown attempt would occur on February 22, after a day in lunar orbit.
“[It] will enable humanity to explore the Moon, Mars, and beyond, bringing us one step closer to making life multi planetary,” SpaceX wrote on X.
Only five countries — the US, Russia, China, India and Japan — have scored a lunar landing and no private business has yet done so.
The US has not returned to the Moon’s surface since the Apollo program ended more than five decades ago.
NASA, the main sponsor with experiments on board, is hoping for a successful moon landing next week as it seeks to jump-start the lunar economy ahead of astronaut missions.
“There have been a lot of sleepless nights getting ready for this,” Intuitive Machines’ co-founder and chief executive Steve Altemus said before the flight.
The Houston-based company aims to put its 4.3-metre tall, six-legged lander down just 300 kilometres shy of the Moon’s south pole, equivalent to landing within Antarctica on Earth.
The region, full of treacherous craters and cliffs, yet potentially rich with frozen water, is where NASA plans to land astronauts later this decade.
The space agency said its six navigation and tech experiments on the lander can help smooth the way.
NASA’s first entry in its commercial lunar delivery service — Astrobotic Technology’s Peregrine lander — stumbled shortly after lift-off in early January.
A ruptured fuel tank and massive leak caused the spacecraft to bypass the Moon and come tearing back through the atmosphere 10 days after launching, breaking apart and burning up over the Pacific.
Others made it to the Moon before wrecking.
An Israeli nonprofit’s lander crashed in 2019.
Last year, a Tokyo company saw its lander smash into the Moon followed by Russia’s crash landing.
Only the US has sent astronauts to the Moon, with Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt closing out the program in December 1972.
That was it for US moon landings until Astrobotic’s short-lived try last month.
Intuitive Machines nicknamed its lander after Homer’s hero in The Odyssey.
“Godspeed, Odysseus. Now let’s go make history,” said Trent Martin, vice president of space systems.
NASA is paying Intuitive Machines $US118 million ($181 million) to get its latest set of experiments to the Moon.
The spacecraft will cease operations after a week on the surface.
ABC/AP