Completing the commissioning maneuver that demonstrated the performance of the main engine, which will be used to place the spacecraft into lunar orbit and, later, land on the moon, was a major milestone for the mission.

“Once we get through that and we know how the engine performs in space, I think our confidence actually goes up that we will have a successful landing on the moon,” Trent Martin, vice president of space systems at Intuitive Machines, said of that engine test in a Feb. 12 interview.

The IM-1 mission is carrying six NASA payloads as part of the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program under a $118 million task order. It is also carrying six payloads for other customers, ranging from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University to the artist Jeff Koons.

The spacecraft, which finally launched on February 15, is expected to touch down on February 22.

Humanity’s quest to explore—and, perhaps eventually, colonize—outer space has prompted a great many ideas about how precisely to go about it.

While conventional wisdom suggests that space launch via rockets is the best way to send human beings into orbit, other “non-rocket” methods have been proposed, including a futuristic “space elevator.”

The concept of a space elevator—essentially a sky-high cable that would let humans climb into space—has been championed by some industry experts as a way to overcome the astronomical costs associated with sending people and cargo into space by rocket, says Alberto de la Torre, assistant professor of physics at Northeastern.

A U.S. company’s 14-foot-tall spacecraft began speeding to the moon, where the vehicle is expected to try to make history by pulling off the first-ever commercial lunar landing.

The lander, called Odysseus and developed by Houston-based Intuitive Machines, isn’t carrying crew, but rather is ferrying scientific and commercial payloads. It was launched at 1:05 a.m. ET Thursday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a SpaceX rocket and later separated from the upper part of that vehicle to start a roughly 239,000-mile journey, according to a livestream.

The spacecraft had a successful launch and connected to radio communications with the company’s mission operations center in Houston, Intuitive Machines said.

SpaceX has launched a mission to the moon that will make history if it achieves a successful landing on the lunar surface week.

A privately-owned spacecraft headed for the Moon has blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was used to launch the lunar lander, nicknamed Odysseus, with the hope that it will land on the Moon’s south pole – where scientists predict there could be a source of water. If all goes well, it will be the first time a private firm has successfully landed on the Moon. It would also be the first US mission in 51 years to complete a soft touchdown on the lunar surface. Subscribe: http://bit.ly/1rbfUog #Space #Moon #BBCNews