First private moon landing mission ends as Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus sleeps permanently

The company continued to listen for a wakeup signal from Odysseus before officially announcing on Sunday that the spacecraft has gone silent permanently. “Flight controllers decided their projections were correct, and Odie’s power system would not complete another call home. This confirms that Odie has permanently faded after cementing its legacy into history as the first commercial lunar lander to land on the Moon,” wrote the company in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

The Odysseus mission is part of NASA’s CLPS initiative. Through the Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, NASA works with private companies to deliver equipment and technology to the Moon. Unlike the Apollo missions of the past which put humanity on the Moon, when NASA goes back to Earth’s lone natural satellite with the Artemis program, it plans to establish a lasting presence there.

Initiatives like CLPS and the US Department of Defense’s Luna10 plan are to build a “lunar economy” that takes advantage of the Moon’s unique location and its resources to build an economy orbiting our planet. The Moon could serve as a staging point for missions to farther parts of the solar system.