The Conversation - America is back on the Moon

Intuitive Machines, a private company, successfully landed a spacecraft carrying the equipment for several science experiments conducted by NASA on the Moon’s surface on Thursday evening. This marked the first U.S. lunar landing in more than five decades and a huge win for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. It wasn’t an easy feat, either. Just last month, another company failed in its attempt to pull off the first landing of this kind.

If taking a chance on these companies is so risky, why is NASA doing it? The partnerships could allow the agency to get more science experiments on the Moon than ever before. And the data from these experiments can both inform physics and cosmology research and help the agency learn more about putting humans back on the Moon – as it aims to do soon.

The lander that touched down two days ago holds the first payload for a program that plans to put a radio telescope on the lunar surface. Jack Burns, a University of Colorado Boulder astronomer and co-investigator on the program, describes NASA’s partnerships with private space companies and some of the science his and other teams hope to do on the Moon in the coming years.

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