“Houston, Odysseus has found its new home,” was what Tim Crain said as he demonstrated that the future of American space travel is private after confirming the success of Intuitive Machines of Houston and their Odysseus alighting on the moon Thursday evening.

Kenneth Chang reports for the New York Times:

For the first time in a half-century, an American-built spacecraft has landed on the moon.

The robotic lander was the first U.S. vehicle on the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972, the closing chapter in humanity’s astonishing achievement of sending people to the moon and bringing them all back alive. That is a feat that has not been repeated or even tried since.

The lander, named Odysseus and a bit bigger than a telephone booth, arrived in the south polar region of the moon at 6:23 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday.

The landing time came and went in silence as flight controllers waited to hear confirmation of success. A brief communication pause was expected, but minutes passed.

Then Tim Crain, the chief technology officer of Intuitive Machines, the Houston-based company that built Odysseus, reported that a faint signal from the spacecraft had been detected.

“It’s faint, but it’s there,” he said. “So stand by, folks. We’ll see what’s happening here.”

NASA paid Intuitive Machines $118 million to carry the agency’s gear to the moon rather than spend upward of $1 billion to produce a similar delivery system — though given government cost overruns, the savings could be substantially more besides. The lander was carried into orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Elon Musk, Blue Origin, and Stoke Space all congratulated Intuitive Machines’ success as the landing was heralded on X.