Houston-based aerospace company Intuitive Machines successfully launched its Nova-C lander, named Odysseus, on a mission to conduct the first US lunar touchdown in over half a century. The Nova-C lander lifted off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The mission is the latest test of NASA’s strategy to use privately owned spacecraft to cut costs for the Artemis moon program. If successful, this would be the first controlled descent to the lunar surface by a US spacecraft since the final Apollo crewed moon mission in 1972 and the first by a private company.