1:42 PM ET, February 22, 2024
Two other lunar landers crash-landed on the moon last year.
From CNN's Kristin Fischer and Jackie Wattles
A model of the lander for the lunar exploration program “Hakuto-R'' by “ispace'' was photographed at a venue monitoring the moon landing in Tokyo in April 2023.
Kim Kyung-hoon/Reuters
Success is not guaranteed as the Odysseus lunar module prepares to land on the moon on Thursday. If he fails, Odysseus, nicknamed “Odi,” will become the third. The lunar module would meet a violent end on the moon in less than a year.
Russia's first lunar lander in 47 years, Luna 25, crash-landed in August 2023 and failed. Hakuto-R, a lander developed by Japan-based company Ispace, suffered a similar fate last April.
In February 1966, the Soviet Union's Luna 9 became the first spacecraft to make a controlled, or “soft” landing. Just four months later, the U.S. robotic probe Surveyor 1 landed on the moon.
Since then, only three countries have achieved such a milestone: China, India, and Japan. All three were the first robot vehicles to reach the moon in the 21st century. India and Japan each achieved this monumental feat within just the past six months.
Odysseus could become the first spacecraft developed by a private company to make a soft landing, a feat that has until now been beyond the reach of the commercial sector. Apart from Ispace's Hakuto-R lander, Israeli company SpaceIL attempted to land its Beresheet spacecraft on the moon in 2019, but it crash-landed due to a technical glitch.
