The United States returns to the Moon half a century after the Apollo program

Half a century after the Apollo 17 mission, a United States spacecraft will arrive on the Moon this Thursday.

This is the

which was successfully launched last week by a Falcon 9 rocket from the SpaceX company.

If the mission is completed successfully, it would be the first moon landing achieved by a private company, Intuitive Machines, owned by billionaire American businessman of Iranian origin Kamal Ghaffarian.

NASA estimates that arrival will occur at 10:24 p.m. Spanish peninsular time (4:24 p.m. on the East Coast of the United States and 3:24 p.m. in the central area of ​​Mexico).

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The new attempt comes after a few eventful months for other competitors in the space race and after the recent fiasco of a Japanese and another American mission.

transports six devices that NASA wants to place safely on the gray dust.

The Intuitive Machines lander fired its engine on the back side of the Moon while out of contact with Earth on Wednesday.

Flight controllers at the company's headquarters in Houston had to wait for the ship to emerge to know if the lander was in orbit or drifting aimlessly away, in one of the most delicate moments of the mission.

During Thursday, controllers have been lowering the orbit of the device from about 60 miles (92 kilometers) to 6 miles (10 kilometers), in a crucial maneuver on the opposite side of the Earth's natural satellite.

They have then targeted the descent near the south pole of the Moon.

Odysseus

tracks its position using cameras, comparing crater patterns to stored maps, and measuring its altitude with laser beams above the surface.

About 1.2 kilometers from the landing site, the spacecraft will pivot in a vertical position and the sensors will look for a safe place to land.

During the last 15 meters of the descent, she will stop using the camera and the altitude measurement laser so as not to be fooled by the dust raised by the engine exhaust.

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