Intuitive Machines' first lunar lander, the Nova-C spacecraft dubbed as "Odysseus," has entered lunar orbit and is preparing to make a landing attempt on the south pole of the moon as early as 17:30 Eastern Time (22:30 UTC) on Thursday (Feb. 22).

According to Space.com, the lander's target is Malapert A, a small impact crater about 190 miles (300 kilometers) from the lunar south pole.

Aboard Odysseus are 12 scientific payloads - half from NASA and the other half from commercial companies - which would carry out multiple science tasks on the moon's surface.

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First Moon Photo

Upon lunar orbit insertion, the spacecraft took a very faint and distant photo of its destination, which Intuitive Machines shared via X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.

"Goodnight, Moon," the caption read. "Odysseus captured this image approximately 100,000km from the Moon using its Terrain Relative Navigation camera."

If successful, Odysseus would be the first American spacecraft - government or commercial - to softly land on the surface of the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.

Intuitive Machines' mission is part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program (CLPS), which aimed at gathering data ahead of NASA's flagship Artemis program that was tasked to return humans back to the surface of the moon by leveraging the capabilities of American lunar landers made by commercial space firms.

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