Space travel: An American company succeeds in the first commercial landing on the moon – Entertainment

Research equipment and 125 miniature sculptures

The Nova-C lander is the size of an old-fashioned British telephone booth, has aluminum legs, weighs about 700 kilograms, and can carry about 130 kilograms of cargo. Much of it was used by NASA with research equipment and other materials, while commercial companies secured the rest for their projects. American artist Jeff Koons also sent with him 125 miniature sculptures made of stainless steel. The artwork was scheduled to be installed in a transparent cube on the surface of the moon.

There was still one hurdle to overcome before landing: the laser system that was supposed to help Odysseus land safely did not work. Scientists from NASA and Intuitive Machines then spontaneously decided to use a similar NASA system on board the lander, which was actually sent for testing in space only and not for actual use during landing.

The transport was a rocket from Elon Musk's company SpaceX

“Nova-C” was launched about a week ago from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport in the US state of Florida. The means of transportation was a Falcon 9 rocket from the space company SpaceX, owned by technology billionaire Elon Musk. The mission is part of NASA's CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) program. Through this program, the US space agency wants to gather as much knowledge as possible on its way back to the moon relatively cheaply and efficiently by awarding and working with lunar landing contracts to private companies. A total of about $2.6 billion (about €2.4 billion) has been allocated to the CLPS program by 2028.