US lunar lander will land TODAY, which would be the first since 1972 after last month’s failed mission

America will return to the moon on Thursday, marking the first time a US-made spacecraft has landed on the moon’s surface since the last Apollo mission in 1972.

Odysseus, or Odie, is floating through space, but unlike previous voyages, this one is owned by Houston-based Intuitive Machines.

The six-legged robot lander is expected to land at 6:24 PM ET in a crater called Malapert A near the moon’s south pole.

The landing attempt will be streamed live NASA TV starts at 5pm ET.

Although the mission is operated by a private company, NASA sponsored the trip to bring its scientific instruments and technology to the moon.

The NASA payload will focus on collecting data on space weather interactions with the moon’s surface, radio astronomy and other aspects of the lunar environment for future landers and NASA’s planned return of astronauts later in the decade.

However, Odie’s mission comes a month after another private company attempted to land on the moon but failed.

Astrobotic Technology attempted to return America to the lunar surface with its Peregrine, but the lander suffered a propulsion system leak en route shortly after being placed in orbit.

Peregrine Falcon returned to Earth, where it burned up in the atmosphere.

The failure of Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander marked the third failure by a private company to achieve a moon landing, following ill-fated attempts by companies from Israel and Japan

But Intuitive Machines hopes to beat the odds with Odie.

The unmanned spacecraft has been orbiting the moon about 92 km above the surface since Wednesday.

That’s six days after it was launched by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

This is the first launch to the moon carried out by Elon Musk’s company.

The six-legged robot lander is expected to land at 5:30 PM ET in a crater called Malapert A near the moon’s south pole

Odie remained “in excellent health” as it continued to orbit the moon, about 240,000 miles (384,000 km) from Earth, transmitting flight data and lunar images to Intuitive Machines’ mission control center in Houston, the company said Wednesday.

The vehicle carries a range of scientific instruments and technology demonstrations for NASA and several commercial customers, designed to run on solar power for seven days before the sun sets over the polar landing site.

Intuitive Machines named its lander after Homer’s hero in “The Odyssey,” or simply “Odie.”

‘Religion, Odysseus. Now let’s make history,” said Trent Martin, vice president of space systems.

Only five countries – the US, Russia, China, India and Japan – have scored a moon landing, and no private company has done so yet.

The United States has not returned to the lunar surface since the Apollo program ended more than fifty years ago.

“There have been a lot of sleepless nights preparing for this,” Steve Altemus, co-founder and CEO of Intuitive Machines, said before the flight.