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The Nova-C lunar lander took off on a launch vehicle from Florida

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Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich / EPA

Shot towards the moon late: An unmanned lunar landing mission has started at the Kennedy Spance Center in the US state of Florida. The Nova-C lunar lander from the US private company Intuitive Machines took off at 1:06 a.m. (7:06 German time) with a launch vehicle from the space company SpaceX.

The launch was originally scheduled for Wednesday, but was canceled due to "methane temperatures outside nominal values." The lunar lander is powered by a mixture of cooled methane and oxygen, so the spacecraft should reach its destination quickly and not be exposed to the high levels of radiation in the Earth's atmosphere for too long.

If the mission, called IM-1, succeeds, it would be the first US moon landing since the end of the Apollo program more than 50 years ago. It would also be the first moon landing by a private space company. The four-meter-long spacecraft, which carries NASA measuring instruments and private cargo like a lunar work of art by Jeff Koons, is scheduled to land on the moon on February 22nd, as originally planned, despite the delayed launch.

Similar missions failed

A Japanese mission and a similar mission from the US company Astrorobotic had previously failed. Their lunar lander had to self-destruct before reaching the moon due to a fuel leak. NASA promotes lunar flights by private companies in order to use them for cargo flights to the moon. With their help, she wants to prepare the moon as a stopover for future flights to Mars.

A soft moon landing is a major challenge. So far, only the USA, the Soviet Union, China, India and most recently Japan have succeeded in landing on the moon. A private company has never succeeded in such an undertaking.

The experiment with the Nova-C is part of NASA's CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) program. With this program, the US space agency wants to collect as much knowledge as possible on its own way back to the moon comparatively cheaply and efficiently by awarding contracts for lunar landings to private companies and working with them.

Intuitive Machines will receive around $77 million for the experiment. The company was founded in 2013 by, among others, the American-Iranian entrepreneur Kam Ghaffarian, who is also behind the company Axiom Space, which recently sent astronauts to the International Space Station on a commercial mission.

hba/AFP/dpa