Another month, another try at the moon — but not on Wednesday.
SpaceX announced the postponement on Tuesday night of the scheduled launch of a private robotic lunar lander.
The spacecraft, built by Intuitive Machines of Houston, is on top the rocket on the launchpad. Weather conditions were favorable but a technical issue led to the delay of its flight by at least a day. The next attempt will be Thursday at 1:05 a.m. Eastern time.
If all goes well then, it will set up the first American spacecraft to land softly on the moon’s surface since the Apollo 17 moon landing in 1972. It will also be the latest private effort to send a spacecraft to the moon.
Why was the launch postponed?
The Intuitive Machines lander, named Odysseus, was scheduled to launch at 12:57 a.m. Eastern on Wednesday on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
