The first American spaceship on the Moon since Apollo landed on it in 1973 is "alive and well" following a drama-packed touchdown, its builder and operator-company said Friday as it worked to download data and images from the unscrewed robot.
Odysseus landed near the lunar south pole Thursday at 6:23 pm Eastern Time (2323 GMT), after a nail-biting final descent when ground teams had to switch to a backup guidance system and took several minutes to establish radio contact after the lander came to rest.
"Odysseus is alive and well," Intuitive Teams, which achieved the first lunar landing by a private company, posted on X on Friday morning. "Flight controllers are communicating and commanding the vehicle to download science data," reports AFP.
The Houston-based company's stock price soared by 40 percent in early trading before paring back to 20 percent.
Engineers are working to learn the robot's precise coordinates in the Malapert A impact crater and its tilt, as the landing phase was carried out by the robot autonomously, using its instruments to navigate the Moon's terrain.
The company said Odysseus, which is the size of a large golf cart, is upright -- a relief after the Japanese space agency's SLIM lander, which touched down in January, ended up upside-down.
Bd-pratidin English/Lutful Hoque
