I am playing hooky from politics today, because right in the middle of my usual writing time there will be a cosmic event streamed live. For the first time since 1972, a vehicle launched from the United States of America will attempt a "soft landing" on the Moon. "Soft landing" means it's going to try to land rather than just crashing into the Moon's surface. This is a historic occasion, made even more so by the fact that the spacecraft was launched by a private company, on top of a different private company's rocket. The event will be streamed live by NASA, but unlike the last American landing on the Moon (Apollo 17, which touched down on December 11, 1972) the mission is being carried out completely by private companies.

NASA did fund the spacecraft, so even though it is being called a "commercial spacecraft" it is more correctly a public-private venture. The company Intuitive Machines designed and built the Odysseus lander, which was launched by a SpaceX rocket. The original plan was to have two such missions happening simultaneously, in fact. NASA's Artemis program also contracted with a company called Astrobotic Technology to build a lander that was launched earlier on a Blue Origin rocket. So a total of four private space companies were involved in the effort. Unfortunately, the Astrobotic mission failed. After separating from the booster rocket, the Peregrine lander's propellant leaked out somehow, leaving it powerless to attempt a lunar landing (which would have been scheduled for tomorrow -- Odysseus launched later but would have arrived first). The Peregrine never left Earth orbit and eventually burned up in the atmosphere on re-entry.

Before

So far, Odysseus is doing much better. As I write this (roughly 45 minutes before the scheduled touchdown), it is in lunar orbit and all of the course-correcting burns which set it on its final trajectory have gone well. As in many recent lunar missions (from other countries, as well), the south polar region of the Moon is the target. If enough ice can be found in the eternal shadows under the Moon's polar crater rims, it could make an actual lunar base (for long-term human presence) a lot more possible and practical.

Not to date myself, but I was indeed alive for the Apollo missions. I barely remember the experience, being quite young at the time (one of my earliest memories, in fact, was watching Apollo 11's Eagle land at Tranquility Base in the lunar "sea" Mare Tranquillitatis). In later missions, I remember watching astronauts hitting a golf ball on the Moon and having lots of fun with their Lunar Rover. I remember being disappointed when the Apollo missions ended. And I have touched an actual Moon rock (available to the general public at the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum in D.C.).

Just for the record, I remain disappointed to this day that we haven't already built an enormous lunar base on the Moon, because this was promised to me by two separate pop culture offerings -- complete with the dates right there in their titles: Space: 1999 and 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Intuitive Machines lander's name was pretty obviously influenced by Arthur C. Clarke's story and/or Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece of a movie.

The movie 2001, which appeared (despite their names) about a decade earlier than the Space: 1999 television show, had an incredibly well-thought-out method of getting from the Earth to the Moon. This may even wind up being how people eventually do get to a lunar base, in a few decades' time (or longer... it would indeed take a lot of money to set this up). From Earth, a lunar traveller would boost using a "space-plane" -- which (in the movie) was operated by the private company Pan Am (which, ironically, had ceased to exist by the year 2001). It looked pretty close to what the space shuttle wound up looking like -- stubby little wings and all (the movie version was a lot more beautiful than the space shuttle's reality, even). One of the most memorable scenes in the movie (which still flashes through my mind each and every time I hear The Blue Danube performed) is this space-plane docking with an space station orbiting Earth. The station is a giant wheel, which slowly rotates to provide "fake gravity" at the rim. From this waystation, the traveller would board a second spacecraft, one that had zero aerodynamic thought put into its design (translation: it wouldn't have to be sleek like an airplane, since it would never encounter an atmosphere, and therefore "drag" or wind resistance simply wouldn't be an issue). This spacecraft would shuttle back and forth from the space station to landing on the Moon itself.

It sounds complicated, but in the book version it's even more so -- there are actually three spacecraft involved, as Clarke posited a second space station in orbit around the Moon.

But let's get back to today's reality rather than science fiction. With less than a half-hour to go, everything still seems to be on track.

After

"The U.S. has returned to the Moon." The head of NASA just officially announced that Odysseus has landed. As I write this, there isn't a whole lot more that we do know, however. Following the scheduled touchdown there was a long pause when communications were lost with the spacecraft. After more than 10 minutes, Mission Control announced that they had re-established communications using at least one of the spacecraft's antennas, but that the signal was weak. There is a question about what attitude the lander is currently in -- if it's not standing up or tilted too far, it may mean the antennas aren't pointing in the right direction. This could be a minor problem that gets fixed (by repointing the antennas, if they're just a bit off, one assumes) or it could be much more serious (if the spacecraft is lying on its side, for instance).

To be clear, this is all my own personal speculation. NASA's feed cut out right after they announced they had re-established communications on at least some level -- that the lander was broadcasting and its faint signal was being received -- so there wasn't a whole lot of technical information provided about what caused the long delay (which wasn't expected to take more than a minute or two) in communications.

This was an ambitious mission, the first soft lunar landing an American spacecraft has made in over 50 years. Both Odysseus and Peregrine are stepping stones to NASA's ultimate goal of returning American astronauts to the surface of the moon. This is how the country got to the Moon in the first place -- step by step. First, manned missions were sent up to orbit Earth. Later missions were sent to orbit the Moon, and in the final test-run (Apollo 10) the Lunar Module (the lander) flew down to an elevation of 50,000 feet from the lunar surface without actually landing. The unmanned missions launched this year are also baby steps towards eventually landing astronauts on the Moon again (which is what NASA's Artemis program is all about).

Odysseus is unique in many ways, starting with its private-sector origin. But it's also the first American lunar lander to make the final descent on its own -- computer-guided with no human's hands "at the wheel." This included a system designed to look down at the Moon's surface on the final approach to spot potential problems -- like landing on a large rock, for instance, or landing on a slope that is too steep for the lander to stand somewhat-level on. The entire process of the final approach was fully automated.

There was one note of concern expressed in the live feed from Mission Control (before the NASA stream ended) about the spacecraft possibly rolling (the figure of "8 degrees" was mentioned) right before the data stream cut off. If something went haywire in either the software or the hardware controlling the spacecraft's attitude (where it was pointing, in other words) then that could be a major problem. The last data point was only given as "below 400 meters" in elevation, which is about a quarter-mile high. Until more data is reported, nobody knows whether this was just a momentary aberration that the spacecraft managed to correct in time or whether it was the start of it rolling uncontrollably out of position.

The Washington Post puts the situation in some perspective:

Landing on the moon is difficult, and many have failed before.

Last year, a Russian spacecraft crashed into the moon's surface. Efforts by Israel and India failed in 2019 -- though India pulled off the feat last year. Recently, a Japanese spacecraft landed softly -- but on its side. And Astrobotic, a company based in Pittsburgh working in partnership with NASA, failed to reach the lunar surface after a propulsion problem.

In space, no one can hear you crash, in other words?

Well, I've delayed posting this article long enough -- it has now been over an hour since either Mission Control or NASA has provided any updates, so I'll have to leave it as "scientists are working furiously to solve the problem."

But no matter how bad or good the news ultimately turns out to be, the spacecraft -- or enough of it, at any rate -- remained at least semi-intact on the surface of the Moon. It wasn't a total failure. If they can at least get back all the data from the landing itself (no matter what went wrong at the end), it will prove to be quite valuable for the Artemis program seen as a whole. This is experimental science in the most severe environment imaginable, testing the automated landing of a spacecraft on the lunar surface. Eventually the problems will be worked out enough to risk sending humans back to the Moon again, which is the ultimate goal. And a human pilot could make last-minute corrections in real time, which was impossible with the unmanned spacecraft. NASA claimed at least a partial victory, so we'll leave it with their official statement: "Today for the first time in more than a half-century, the U.S. has returned to the Moon."

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant