An uncrewed private spacecraft called Odysseus landed on the Moon at 6:23 PM (ET) on Thursday, February 22. This marks the first time a spacecraft from the United States has touched the lunar surface in over 50 years (the last one was Apollo 17 in 1972).
Built by the Houston-based aerospace company Intuitive Machines, the 14-foot-tall Odysseus touched down in the Moon’s south polar region. The robotic lander carries NASA experiments onboard because the agency hopes to land humans on that part of the Moon in a few years. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that Odysseus apparently tripped over a lunar rock during the landing and tipped over onto its side. As nightfall descended over the south pole, Odysseus’ solar panels, which struggled to get sunlight in their awkward position, were unable to charge the lander’s batteries. Consequently, Odysseus shut down.
The story of Odysseus highlights something we seem to forget.
Landing on the moon isn’t easy. Even with today’s advanced technology, success is never guaranteed. Russia and Japan attempted vehicle landings in 2023 but both failed. Just a few months before Odysseus launched, a lander from another private U.S. company was unable to get out of Earth’s orbit. Since the ’70s, only three countries other than the U.S.—China, India and Japan—have successfully landed on the Moon.
So, what’s changed? After all, the Moon hasn’t gotten any farther away since the days of the Apollo missions. And people still talk about building colonies on the Moon in the distant future.
As the saying goes, it’s all about the money.
For various reasons, governments have cut back on spending for space, which has put pressure on organizations like NASA to make hard decisions and get creative with how they spend their budgets.
To put it in perspective, from 1960 to 1973, the U.S. government spent roughly $285 billion dollars, adjusted for inflation, on the Gemini and Apollo space missions. (Gemini perfected the technology that made Apollo’s Moon landings possible.) That’s around 17% of today’s U.S. budget (fiscal year 2024).
NASA’s share of federal spending peaked in 1966, when expenditures made up 4.4% of federal spending. Compare that to NASA’s budget in fiscal year 2020, which was $22.629 billion, about 0.48% of all U.S. government spending. You could call it a fleck of moondust compared to what it used to be.
But it’s not just about the money. There’s also the question of what happened to that institutional knowledge inside NASA. That’s the folks who figured out what it took to reach the Moon.
Regaining past knowledge and experience is a big part of the challenge for the U.S., Scott Pace, director of George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute, told CNN.
“We’re learning to do things that we haven’t done in a long time, and what you’re seeing is organizations learning how to fly again,” Pace said. “Going to the Moon is not a matter of just a brave or brilliant astronaut. It’s a matter of entire organizations that are organized, trained and equipped to go out there. What we’re doing now is essentially rebuilding some of the expertise that we had during Apollo but lost over the last 50 years.”
So, who is picking up the slack?
More and more, space exploration is being done by private companies instead of just governments. Companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin are leading the way and doing so for profit. NASA is providing funding to those companies to develop space capabilities. The agency pays SpaceX to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station and to launch experiments. NASA works with other companies as well. And don’t forget, Odysseus carried NASA experiments to the Moon.
NASA is also counting on SpaceX to develop a lunar lander for its Artemis III mission to return astronauts to the Moon. That mission is scheduled for 2026.
A public-private partnership in space exploration is relatively new. Companies need to follow NASA’s guidelines while the agency must adapt to how the private sector works. This will take a while to figure out.
Although it’s clear that space exploration has changed since the Apollo missions, it also seems the Moon is starting to have a moment again.
