The Texan company Intuitive Machines succeeded on Thursday, February 22, in the first moon landing of an American probe in more than 50 years, and at the same time became the first private company to successfully complete the maneuver.
The Nova-C lander, which notably transports NASA scientific instruments, measures a little over four meters high.
It took off last week from Florida and entered lunar orbit on Wednesday.
Intuitive Machines has decided to make one more trip to the Moon than planned before launching the landing procedure, the company announced Thursday to explain the delay.
Cameras and lasers
The dreaded, fully automated descent took about an hour.
Cameras and lasers allowed the device to guide itself in real time.
The final descent began at 30 meters above sea level.
It was at this moment that a small craft equipped with cameras, developed by Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, was ejected from the moon to capture the big moment from the outside.
India and Japan recently managed to land there thanks to their national space agencies, becoming the fourth and fifth countries to do so, after the Soviet Union, the United States and China.
But several companies - Israeli, Japanese and American - have so far failed to reproduce the same feat.
Russia also missed a moon landing this summer.