The first US spacecraft to land on the surface of the Moon for over 50 years has sent a “farewell transmission” and gone quiet.

On Thursday 15 February, Houston-based Intuitive Machines launched its robotic lunar lander mounted on a SpaceX rocket. The 1,908kg Nova-C lander – known as Odysseus or ‘Odie’ - was heading for the crater Malapert A, 300km from the Moon’s south pole.

Intuitive Machines’ mission, IM-1, was tasked with delivering six Nasa instruments to the lunar surface as part of Nasa’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services programme, with the contract reportedly worth $118m. These instruments were intended to collect data to help develop Nasa’s Artemis programme – which aims to establish a crewed base near the lunar south pole, where subsurface water ice is likely to be abundant, by the end of the decade.

A week after taking off, on 22 February, the craft touched down on the moon, making Intuitive Machines the first private business to land a spacecraft on the moon without crashing...