'Odysseus', the ship with which the US wants to return to the Moon half a century later, has been successfully launched. The Intuitive Machines module aims to become the first private device to land on the satellite next week.

The success rate for lunar landers is still below 50% and recent years have not helped improve the statistic. The launch had an added component of innovation given that SpaceX's Falcon 9 was powered for the first time with methane, a fuel that China had already managed to use successfully.