Odysseus: Private mission to moon beams pic of Bel’kovich K crater. How to watch landing live

Intuitive Machines lunar lander live streaming Online:US-based private company Intuitive Machines is all set to touchdown on the Moon on Thursday evening with its lunar spacecraft. The Houston company launched the spacecraft bound for the Moonon February 15. It aims to achieve a soft landing on the lunar surface.

If the mission successfully achieves a soft landing on the Moon on February 22, Intuitive Machines will become the first-ever private firm to do so, opening similar avenues for other players in the field.

This will also be the firstUSlanding on the lunar surface since theApollo 17mission that achieved the distinctionin 1972.

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The IM-1 mission was launched with a robotic lunar lander aboard the Odysseus spacecraft last week. The engine of Odysseus' spacecraft was fired for six minutes and 48 seconds before it was slowed down to be pulled by the moon’s gravity into a circular orbit 57 miles above the surface.

Odysseus, which is about the size of a British telephone booth, launched atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, carrying 12 payloads toward the moon. Half of them are NASA science instruments, which the agency put on board via its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program (CLPS).

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With Thursday evening’s completion of the IM-1 mission, it will become the first American mission to arrive on the Moon since Apollo 17 in 1972.

Here’s how you can watch the landing live:

When and where to watch the live landing ofOdysseus?(Moon Landing live streaming)

Odysseus is expected to land on the lunar surface at 5:30 pm Eastern Time (4:00 am IST Friday) on Thursday. The landing time was changed by Intuitive Machines on Wednesday afternoon, moving it up by 19 minutes. The live landing of the spacecraft can be seen on the official YouTube channel of NASA.

The landing is expected to begin at 4:00 pm ET (2:30 am IST Friday) on Thursday.

On its way to the landing site, Odysseus teaseda new image, an image of the Bel’kovich crater in the Moon’s northern equatorial highlands. The image was captured by Odysseus’ Terrain Relative Navigation camera.

The crater is approximately 50 km in diameter with mountains in the centre, made when the crater was formed.

Earlier, the spacecraftcaptured some mesmerising images of the moon and of the Earth.

Just like India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission, Odysseus aims to land at a spot in the South Polar Region, a flat plain outside the Malapert A crater. Malapert A is a satellite crater of the larger Malapert crater, which is named after Charles Malapert, a 17th-century Belgian astronomer.

The landing site is about 185 miles from the moon’s south pole.

With the IM-1 mission, the Intuitive Machine is designed to carry several of NASA'spayloads in future that may hopefully support human missions on the moon in the coming years.

(With inputs from agencies)