Intuitive Machines' private Odysseus probe snaps 1st moon photo, enters lunar orbit ahead of historic landing attempt

Odysseus is now circling the moon.

The robotic Odysseus spacecraft, built by Houston company Intuitive Machines, arrived in lunar orbit this morning (Feb. 21) after acing a crucial maneuver.

“Odysseus completed its scheduled 408-second main engine lunar orbit insertion burn and is currently in a 92-km [57 miles] circular lunar orbit,” Intuitive Machines announced via X today.

“After traveling over 1,000,000 km [620,000 miles], Odysseus is now closer to the moon than the end-to-end distance driving across Space City, Houston, TX,” the company added in another X post.

Odysseus’ time in lunar orbit will be brief: The lander will try to touch down near the moon’s south pole on Thursday afternoon (Feb. 22) at 5:49 p.m. EST (2249 GMT). Success would be historic: No private spacecraft has ever soft-landed on the moon, and no American vehicle has done so since Apollo 17 in 1972. You can watch the attempt here at Space.com.

During its lunar approach, Odysseus notched another big milestone, snapping its first photo of the moon (that we know of). Intuitive Machines shared that image via X today as well.

“Goodnight, moon. Odysseus captured this image approximately 100,000 km [62,000 miles] from the moon using its Terrain Relative Navigation camera,” the company said in a post early this morning.

Odysseus, which is about the size of a British telephone booth, launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Feb. 15, carrying 12 payloads toward the moon. Half of them are NASA science instruments, which the agency put on board via its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, or CLPS.

CLPS aims to help NASA gather data that will advance the agency’s Artemis program of crewed moon exploration, by leveraging the capabilities of private American lunar landers.

Artemis aims to establish a crewed base near the moon’s south pole by the end of the 2020s. This region is thought to contain large amounts of water ice, which could be used for life support and be processed into rocket fuel to help refuel spacecraft on the go.

Odysseus’ mission, called IM-1, isn’t the first CLPS effort to get off the ground. Last month, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander took flight on the debut mission of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket. Peregrine suffered a serious fuel leak shortly after deploying from the rocket’s upper stage, however, and Astrobotic ended up steering the probe into Earth’s atmosphere on Jan. 18.

The other six payloads Odysseus is carrying on IM-1 belong to private customers, including Columbia Sportswear, which put some of its “Omni-Heat Infinity” insulative material aboard to give it a deep-space test.

Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus moon lander beamed home this selfie on Feb. 16, 2024, a day after launching atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. (Image credit: Intuitive Machines via X)

Odysseus isn’t the first private spacecraft to reach lunar orbit. For example, the Beresheet and Hakuto-R landers — built by a private Israeli team and the Tokyo-based company iSpace, respectively — both successfully circled Earth’s nearest neighbor.

Both, however, crashed during their touchdown attempts, Beresheet in April 2019 and Hakuto-R in April 2023.