Moon landing live updates: Odysseus completes first U.S. lunar landing since 1972

Coverage of the landing has begun on Intuitive Machines' website and on NASA TV. People can watch on either site but the streams are identical.

In the final moments of Odysseus' descent, it may take a bit of time to confirm what exactly happened.

Intuitive Machines said they expect about a 15-second delay as data is relayed back to Earth. In a video published yesterday by the company, Intuitive Machines' Chief Technology Officer, Tim Crain, said it will be a nail-biting finish.

"I can tell you just from doing our simulations, that's the longest 15 seconds you'll ever experience," he said, "as you wait for the final light to turn green to indicate that you've landed on the moon."

The U.S. has ambitions to be the first to get back to the moon. NBC News’ Sam Brock has more on the space race to the lunar surface. 

With less than two hours to go before landing, the biggest hurdles are still ahead for Odysseus. But getting to this point has its own challenges, too.

In a video describing the spacecraft's flight path, Intuitive Machines Chief Technology Officer Tim Crain explained how the spacecraft will prepare for its descent to the lunar surface. In particular, Odysseus must complete a burn maneuver on the far side of the moon, where the moon itself blocks direct communication with mission controllers on Earth.

“Once we get around the moon, we have on the day side of the moon the sun heating us from one side and reflected infrared light off the bright moon warming us on the other,” Crain said. “Then we plunge into night and now we’re cold on both sides. It’s very tough.”

An image taken by the Odysseus’ Terrain Relative Navigation camera of the Bel’kovich K crater on the moon’s northern equatorial highlands as the lunar lander prepares for its landing.

Thomas Zurbuchen led the creation of NASA’s $2.6 billion Commercial Lunar Payload Services program about six years ago, out of which Intuitive Machines’ won an $118 million contract to carry payloads for the IM-1 mission.

“Coming up with Commercial Lunar Payload Services, I basically felt that the moon as a planetary body had not been focused on enough. The question was: Can we [land cargo missions on the moon] at a rate that is substantially lower in cost than the half-a-billion to a billion dollars that it would take if we did it on the inside of the agency?” Zurbuchen told CNBC.

This NASA program is about tolerating failures and trying to help companies make as many attempts as possible, as frequently as possible, while the agency focuses its own efforts instead on its crewed Artemis missions.

“We should give it a few shots on goal to just make sure it can work at the 50% level, or find out if that is a lot less likely,” Zurbuchen said.

Read the full story here.

Jeff Bezos' space company, Blue Origin, showed off its new rocket today. The booster, dubbed New Glenn, was rolled out and raised into vertical position at Launch Complex 36 at Florida's Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The rocket will now undergo a week of testing at the launchpad.

New Glenn was named for astronaut John Glenn, who was the first American to orbit Earth. Blue Origin has yet to announce a date for New Glenn's debut launch, but it is expected to be sometime this year.

Much like Intuitive Machines’ spacecraft, its stock has been flying to the moon over the past week.

In a little over a month since hitting all-time lows, and with its IM-1 mission on the way to the lunar surface, shares of Intuitive Machines have climbed more than 300% since early January. It’s a rally that Wall Street analysts describe as fueled by retail investors’ excitement for the space company’s progress toward an unprecedented goal.

The Texas-based lunar company’s stock, with the apt ticker of “LUNR,” now trades for about $9 per share, a far cry from January lows of closer to $2. At one point this week, as IM-1 progressed through milestones ahead of its landing attempt — the stock reached over $13 in trading.

Read the full story here.

Jeff Koons, an American artist best known for his oversized sculptures of everday objects (like massive balloon animals with bright mirror finishes), has some art aboard today's lander.

A Koons piece, "Moon Phases," is a piece of artwork that features a collection of 125 moon sculptures that are aboard Odysseus and will be displayed on the lunar surface.

There's more riding on today's moon landing than just a spot in history. Odysseus was developed as part of a NASA program that aims to support the agency's broader ambitions to return astronauts to the moon and build bases on the lunar surface.

NASA eventually plans to hire companies like Intuitive Machines to ferry cargo and science instruments to the moon.

Intuitive Machines was awarded a $118 million contract to carry out the current mission with the Odysseus lander.

No private company has ever landed a spacecraft on the moon. Intuitive Machines hopes to change that today.

The company, headquarted in Houston (also knows as Space City for being home to NASA's human spaceflight operations), built the Odysseus lander as part of IM-1 — the name for its lunar mission.

The company is stacked with NASA and space-industry veterans including CEO and co-founder Stephen Altemus, who previously worked as the deputy director of the Johnson Space Center.

The private space industry has boomed in recent decades thanks in part to the emergence of more launch options including SpaceX and Blue Origin.

Intuitive Machines is hoping to suceed where other recent landers have failed.

Just last month, a different private company, the Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic Technology, was chasing the same historic milestone. Astrobotic's lander, named Peregrine, lifted off on Jan. 8 but suffered a damaging fuel leak shortly after launch that left the spacecraft with no way to reach the moon. The company was eventually forced to scrap the mission and Peregrine burned up in the atmosphere after languishing in space for more than a week.

Only five nations and their government space agencies have achieved a controlled or "soft" landing on the moon. The first was the Soviet Union in 1966. The United States followed suit a few months later with the robotic Surveyor 1 spacecraft.

Most recently, Japan has joined the elite ranks of countries that can boast a moon landing. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Smart Lander for Investigating Moon, or SLIM probe, touched down on Jan. 25.

Intuitive Machines said that its livestream of the landing mission will start at 5 p.m. ET, after the landing itself was pushed back to 6:24 p.m.

To prepare Odysseus for landing, mission controllers will bring the spacecraft down to an orbit of around 6 miles above the lunar surface. Once that happens, the craft will be autonomous, using onboard cameras and lasers to navigate its descent.

The spacecraft must slow itself by roughly 6,000 feet per second in order to land softly on the moon, according to Intuitive Machines.

As Odysseus nears its landing site, the spacecraft's onboard software will scan for a safe area that is relatively flat and free of other hazards. Then, from an altitude of approximately 100 feet above the surface, the lander will begin its vertical descent.

Officials at Intuitive Machines described the final step in the landing process as walking toward a door with eyes closed for the last 3 feet. “You know you're close enough, but your inner ear must lead you through the door,” the company said in a statement.

NASA announced that Intuitive Machines will add one extra orbit around the moon before attempting to land Odysseus on the surface. The maneuver will push the landing time back, with a new targeted touchdown of 6:24 p.m. ET.

The landing time has shifted a few times today (and in days prior) as mission controllers have adjusted the spacecraft's orbit in preparation for its descent to the moon.

Say cheese!

Odysseus snapped this selfie shortly after it entered into orbit around the moon on Wednesday.

Intuitive Machines' lander will be targeting a landing site close to the moon's south pole. The spacecraft will attempt touch down near a crater called Malapert A.

The crater was named after Charles Malapert, a Belgian astronomer who lived from 1581 to 1630.

During NASA's Apollo program, astronauts landed at various sites in the moon's equatorial region, but the south pole has been intriguing to scientists because water ice is thought to be relatively abundant in permanently shadowed craters.

In 2022, NASA unveiled 13 areas, all located near the moon's south pole, as potential landing sites for the agency's upcoming Artemis III mission, which will land the first woman and the first person of color on the moon. That flight is expected to launch in September 2026.

A robotic spacecraft will attempt to become the first privately built craft to touch down on the moon. If successful, it will also be the first American spacecraft to touch down on the lunar surface in more than 50 years.

Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lander, nicknamed Odysseus, is expected to touch down on the lunar surface at 4:24 p.m. ET. If all goes as planned, the lander will be the first American spacecraft on the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

Odysseus will be targeting a landing site near a crater called Malapert A, close to the moon’s south pole.

Read the full story here.

Intuitive's spacecraft, nicknamed Odysseus, is on its way. This picture from shortly after its launch shows Earth in the background.

The U.S. hasn't landed anything on the moon in 50 years. That could change today.