'Everything has changed since Apollo': Why landing on the moon is still incredibly difficult in 2024
On Thursday (Feb. 22), a phone booth-sized spacecraft named Odysseus made history. Landing at the moon’s south pole at 6:23 p.m. ET, Odysseus — built by the Houston-based company Intuitive Machines — became the first U.S. lander to touch down on the moon in more than 50 years, and the first private lander to ever reach the lunar surface. This success was a welcome break from a string of lunar failures, with five of the previous nine attempted moon landings ending poorly for various nations and private companies. Weeks earlier, on Jan. 19, Japan's Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon (SLIM) spacecraft successfully completed the country's first moon landing — albeit ending up upside down on the lunar surface due to an engine malfunction during descent. The lopsided lander's solar cells faced the wrong direction and failed to power its instruments and communications, forcing engineers to shut it down in fear of battery discharge. (Engineers briefly restor...