蜜芽传媒

It鈥檚 the first time private companies have been involved in a lunar landing. Elon Musk's Space X built the rocket, and a company called Intuitive Machines built the landing craft.

Houston-based Intuitive Machines defied instrument failure to land its un-crewed Odysseus craft near the lunar south pole. It took several minutes for controllers to establish that the lander was down, but eventually a signal was received. It's at a location where water-ice is thought to exist, which would be a valuable resource for future human exploration.

Its planned scientific investigations - the US space agency Nasa has purchased room on Odysseus for six scientific instruments - make it a scout for the return of astronauts to the Moon later this decade. For more on the the increasing part being taken by commercial companies in the space industry, Newsday鈥檚 Beverly Ochieng spoke to historian Robert Pearlman who founded the website collectSPACE.com :

鈥淣asa has found that by turning over well-established systems to commercial industry... it saves the agency money and time and also establishes an economy where these companies can sell their services to others. What started as Nasa paying companies to fly cargo and then, later, humans to the international space station has now turned into those same companies flying commercial cargo and private citizens to the international space station or other destinations."

"By creating these economies then Nasa hopes to be able to turn over now low Earth orbit essentially to commercial industry, freeing them to focus on sending humans back into deep space and ultimately onto Mars."

(Pic: A computer generated image issued by Intuitive Machines/Nasa of an artist's impression of Intuitive Machine's Nova-C Odysseus lander; Credit: Nasa)

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