The first private ship that the United States wants to return to the moon after half a century

The company's Nova-C lander, called Odysseus, took off shortly after 7 a.m. (Spanish time) aboard a Falcon 9 rocket piloted by Elon Musk's SpaceX from NASA's Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral.

Live online video from NASA-SpaceX showed the two-stage, 25-story rocket roaring off the launch pad and hurtling into the dark sky over Florida's Atlantic coast, followed by a fiery, yellowish plume of exhaust.

The launch, previously scheduled for Wednesday morning, was delayed by 24 hours due to erratic temperatures detected in the liquid methane used in the vehicle's propulsion system. SpaceX said the issue was later resolved.

Although considered an intuitive instrument mission, the IM-1 flight endured Six NASA instrument payloads It is designed to collect data on the lunar environment ahead of NASA's planned return of astronauts to the Moon later this decade.

Thursday's launch comes a month after another private company's lunar lander, Astrobotic Technology, suffered a propulsion system leak on its way to the Moon shortly after being launched into orbit on January 8 by United Launch Alliance's (ULA) Vulcan rocket. During its launch. . Debut trip.

Astrobotic's Peregrine lander failsThis was the third time that a private company failed to achieve a “soft landing” on the moon, after ill-fated efforts by companies in Israel and Japan. .

Those setbacks illustrated the risks NASA faces in relying more than in the past on the commercial sector to achieve its spaceflight goals.