For the first time since 1972, an American Private moon lander named Odysseus lander will be making its first moon landing attempt today. This historic touchdown would commence NASA’s official plan to establish a permanent human presence on the moon as part of its Artemis missions.

Intuitive Machines, a Houston-based company built the Odysseus as a 14-foot-tall (4.3 meters) lunar lander to land and operate on the lunar south pole. The sophisticated lander will be making its attempt to land close to the lunar south pole today Feb. 22 at exactly 5:30 p.m. EST (2230 GMT).

The good news is that you can watch the private company make this historic moon landing today on NASA’s TV or Space.com. The Coverage for this historic milestone will commence at 4:00 p.m. EST (2100 GMT).

How Odysseus Lander Commenced Its Journey
On Feb. 15, the Odysseus lander was launched on a six-day journey to the moon atop SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The lunar lander carried 12 payloads onboard including six NASA’s science and technology instruments. NASA paid the company about $118 million for the ride of these instruments to the moon.

After traveling for more than 620,000 miles (1,000,000 meters), the lander finally conducted aced maneuvers yesterday (Feb.21) to enter a tight circular orbit around the moon. The telephone-booth-sized spacecraft entered the tight circular orbit around the moon to prepare for its landing attempt today.

“We’re very excited, but we’re also very nervous,” said Jack Burns, a professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who’s the principal investigator for one of the NASA science instruments onboard Odysseus. “The success has been mixed in going to the surface of the moon.”

If everything works according to plan, Odysseus will eventually touch down on the rim of the small crater named Malapert A. Malapert A is about 190 miles (300 km) from the lunar south pole on the Earth-facing side. Since no private moon lander has ever touched down the lunar surface before, today’s successful landing will be historic and widely celebrated across the globe.

Intuitive Machines is not the first private company to make this landing attempt. Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander which was launched earlier last month could not succeed in reaching the moon as it encountered propellant leakage. The handlers of the Peregrine ended up crashing the lunar lander back into Earth’s atmosphere on Jan. 18.

The Israeli Beresheet and Japanese Hakuto-R landers also reached the lunar orbit. However, they both crashed into the moon during touchdown attempts in April 2019 and April 2023 respectively. We should hope that Odysseus’ lander also known as IM-1 will succeed with its first landing attempt.