Elon Musk congratulates Intuitive Machines on Moon Rover landing

San Francisco: Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Friday congratulated the US company Intuitive Machines on the moon rover landing.

Intuitive Machines’ first lunar lander touched down on the moon early Friday morning, marking the first American spacecraft to land on the lunar surface in more than 50 years.

“After troubleshooting communications, flight controllers have confirmed Odysseus is upright and starting to send data. Right now, we are working to downlink the first images from the lunar surface,” Intuitive Machines posted on X.

To which Musk congratulated, saying, “Congrats on landing on the moon!”.

The uncrewed lander, named Odysseus, landed at the lunar South Pole on Thursday at 6.23 p.m. Eastern Time (4.53 a.m. India time), according to NASA.

Odysseus carries NASA science and other commercial payloads to the moon.

The spacecraft was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Thursday last week from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The mission, codenamed IM-1, marks Intuitive Machines’ first robotic flight to the moon’s surface.

The last US moon landing mission was made in December 1972, when Apollo 17 touched down on the lunar surface for the final mission of the Apollo Programme.