And video of the Odysseus lander separating from the rocket. The lander is about 14 feet tall.

Deployment of @Int_Machines IM-1 confirmed pic.twitter.com/daPrWFkVng

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) February 15, 2024

Some images taken from the lander looking back at earth.

Intuitive Machines successfully transmitted its first IM-1 mission images to Earth on February 16, 2024. The images were captured shortly after separation from @SpaceX's second stage on Intuitive Machines’ first journey to the Moon under @NASA's CLPS initiative. pic.twitter.com/9LccL6q5tF

— Intuitive Machines (@Int_Machines) February 17, 2024

After traveling through space the lander went into orbit around the moon yesterday.

Odysseus passes over the near side of the Moon following lunar orbit insertion on 21FEB2024. The lander continues to be in excellent health in lunar orbit.
(21FEB2024 1608 CST) pic.twitter.com/UX4kgkv5EW

— Intuitive Machines (@Int_Machines) February 21, 2024

So what's left now is the tricky part. The lander will fire it's rockets to begin a descent toward the lunar surface and, hopefully, a soft landing. Here's a graphic from IM showing what is supposed to happen.

Flight controllers analyzed the post-Lunar Orbit Insertion engine burn data and updated the anticipated flight maneuver timing, including an expected 1630 CST landing opportunity on Thursday. The landing opportunity will be Odysseus’ hardest challenge yet. The lander continues to… pic.twitter.com/T6ULovaOPf

— Intuitive Machines (@Int_Machines) February 21, 2024

The exact timing of the landing has changed several times in the last day. As of this morning it was set for 4:24 Eastern time but a short time ago the company announced the lander would make one additional orbit of the moon which now puts the landing at 6:24 Eastern. That means we won't know what happened until a little after this post is published so I'll add an update below. Again, here's a description of what is supposed to happen.

As the 14-foot-tall spacecraft descends toward the surface, on-board cameras and lasers are programmed to scan the ground below to identify landmarks, providing steering inputs to the lander's guidance system to help fine tune the trajectory.

One hour later...the main engine is expected to ignite again at an altitude of about 18 miles and to keep firing for the final 10 minutes of the descent, flipping Odysseus from a horizontal orientation to vertical and dropping straight down at just under 4 mph.

As the spacecraft drops below 100 feet, an innovative camera package, known as "EagleCam," built by students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, will fall away and attempt to photograph the lander's final descent from the side. NASA cameras on board the spacecraft will photograph the ground directly below.

This isn't the first time a private company has tried to land on the moon but three previous attempts have all failed. A Japanese company's lander crashed into the moon last April because of a software glitch. Years earlier a private effort from Israel reached the moon but also crash landed. More recently another American company, Astrobotic Technology of Pittsburgh, lost communication with its lander which eventually made its way back to earth where it burned up in the atmosphere.

Even some recent landing attempts with state backing have failed. Russia's Luna-25 lander crash landed on the moon last August. And Japan's SLIM lander came remarkably close to success but somehow came to rest upside-down with its solar panels facing the wrong way (photo above). All of that to say, no moon landing is a sure thing and what IM is trying today has been tried but never accomplished before by any private company.

If it goes well, Odysseus will be landing near the moon's south pole where scientists hope to gather more information on ice which remains in some craters where sunlight never reaches. That ice could potentially be a source of oxygen for future astronauts as well as fuel for future spaceships.

All of this plays into a new space race focused on the moon, one in which the US is facing increasing competition from China.

Stay tuned and if the landing does take place as planned today I'll have an update here shortly. The lander won't be able to transmit video live but IM says they will know within a matter of seconds whether the landing was a success.

Update: So the landing seemed to be going smoothly up until a few hundred meters above the surface. But at that point there was a communications problem. The lander was programmed to land itself in these circumstances and it seems to have done so.

After about 10 minutes of silence, IM mission control said the lander was down and they did have a faint signal from a high-gain antenna. They are now trying to dial in ground tracking more precisely to that location. But as of now it looks like Odysseus made it.