Recorded earlier
A robotic spacecraft is expected to touch down on the moon’s surface Thursday night, in what will mark the United States’s first uncrewed commercial moon landing.
The autonomous lander, called Odysseus, launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 last Thursday.
It was created by the company Intuitive Machines and is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, which includes a series of private contracts between NASA and U.S. companies to deliver materials to the lunar surface.
The lander has a variety of scientific instruments that will help “perform science test technologies and demonstrate capabilities,” while NASA pursues further exploration of the moon.
On the way to the moon, the instruments will help measure fuel quantities and collect data on plume-surface interactions, NASA stated. Once on the moon, the instruments will investigate space weather and lunar surface interactions and radio astronomy, the agency stated.
It will be the first attempt at a U.S. touchdown on the lunar surface in more than 50 years since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
The landing is expected at 6:24 p.m. EST Thursday.
To watch the landing, visit NASA’s platforms, which will host live coverage on NASA+ starting at 5 p.m. EST in addition to NASA Television the NASA app, the space agency’s website, or NASA’s YouTube page.
The stream can also be caught on The Hill’s website.