A spacecraft enters the moon in preparation for the first landing in more than 50 years

ArabiaWeather - In its effort to achieve the first American landing on the moon in more than 50 years, as well as the first landing of a private company's spacecraft ever, a spacecraft manufactured by the company "Intuitive Machines" arrived in lunar orbit on Wednesday.

The six-legged Nova-C rover, also known as Odysseus, entered a circular orbit at an altitude of 92 kilometers above the lunar surface, the company announced in an online statement. This came after operating the main rocket propulsion for approximately 7 minutes during the orbit entry maneuver.

The company reported that the “Odysseus” vehicle is still in “excellent condition,” and that mission controllers in Houston will continue to monitor flight data and transmit images of the moon throughout its stay in lunar orbit at a distance of 384,000 kilometers from Earth.

The spacecraft is expected to begin gradually lowering its orbit over the next 24 hours, and is scheduled to land near the moon's south pole at 5:49 pm EDT (22:49 GMT), today, Thursday. On board will be 6 payloads from the US space agency NASA containing instruments designed to collect data about the lunar environment.

The "Odysseus" journey, which began 6 days ago, will begin on February 15, aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, which was manufactured by Elon Musk's company SpaceX, which is based in California, from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

If the flight is successful, this will be the first controlled landing mission on the moon by an American spacecraft since the last manned Apollo mission to the moon in 1972, and it will also be the first mission of its kind carried out by a private company in this context.

Source: alarabiya

Image source: The American spacecraft in its first pictures after launching towards the moon (AFP)