00:00 Houston-based aerospace company Intuitive Machines' Moon Lander launched from Florida
00:06 early Thursday, February 15, on a mission to conduct the first U.S. lunar touchdown
00:11 in more than half a century and the first by a privately owned spacecraft.
00:15 This also marks the first journey to the lunar surface under NASA's Artemis Moon program.
00:20 The company's NovaSea Lander dubbed Odysseus lifts off shortly after 1 a.m. EST atop a
00:26 two-stage Falcon 9 rocket flown by Elon Musk's SpaceX from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in
00:31 Cape Canaveral.
00:33 The IM-1 flight is carrying six NASA payloads of instruments designed to gather data about
00:37 the lunar environment ahead of NASA's planned return of astronauts to the moon later this
00:42 decade.
00:43 If successful, the flight will represent the first controlled descent to the lunar surface
00:47 by a U.S. spacecraft since the final Apollo mission in 1972.
00:51 (upbeat music)
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