2024-02-14 15:59:00
Another commercial company wants to attempt a moon landing. But the start planned for Wednesday had to be postponed.
The temperatures of the methane fuel deviated from the norm, according to a statement from NASA. The lander was scheduled to lift off from the Cape Canaveral spaceport in the US state of Florida on Wednesday using a “Falcon 9” rocket from technology billionaire Elon Musk’s space company SpaceX.
It would be the first commercial moon landing in history
After several failed attempts, the US company Intuitive Machines wants to tackle the goal of the first commercial moon landing. It would be the first – albeit unmanned – US moon landing since the Apollo missions over 50 years ago and the first commercial landing on the Earth’s satellite in space history.
The experiment is part of NASA’s “CLPS” (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) program. With this program, the US space agency wants to collect as much knowledge as possible on its own way back to the moon comparatively cheaply and efficiently by awarding contracts for lunar landings to private companies and working with them.