This is the nail-biting moment scientists at NASA watched the first successful US moon landing in half a century.
Footage from the agency’s control room shows people cheering after Odysseus, a six-legged robot, landed safely Thursday evening.
It marked the first time a US spacecraft landed on the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.
The mission, a precursor to sending actual astronauts back to the moon, marks the first time a private company has achieved a moon landing.
The robot was built and flown by Intuitive Machines, a Houston-based company run by a former NASA official.
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Odysseus is carrying NASA tools that will help the agency improve its future lunar missions. Included in the payload are LIDAR lasers that will determine altitude and speed during landing, which will help future missions.
The robot is also carrying tools that will collect data on space weather interactions as well as radio noise on the moon’s surface, Reuters reports.
The agency hopes to return astronauts to the moon later in the decade. China, on the other hand, plans to do the same by 2030.
India was the last nation to land a robot on the moon back in August. So far, the US is the only country that has sent humans to Earth’s only natural satellite.
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