NASA is back on the moon — with the first commercial lunar landing ever

Ellyn Lapointe,Morgan McFall-Johnsen / BUSINESS INSIDER

• NASA and Intuitive Machines' IM-1 mission landed on the moon on Thursday.

• This is NASA's first return to the lunar surface since the last Apollo mission in 1972.

• The landing helps catapult the US into a 21st-century space race to the moon's south pole.

An American moon lander touched down on the lunar surface for the first time in more than 50 years on Thursday.

The uncrewed Odysseus lander, made by the Houston company Intuitive Machines in collaboration with NASA, claimed a major victory not just for the US but for the space industry at large: It's the first commercial spacecraft to ever land on the moon without crashing.

The past five years have racked up a series of failed moon landings — by Russia, India, Japan, an Israeli nonprofit, a Japanese company, and, just last month, the NASA collaborator Astrobotic. Everyone is scrambling to get...See Xs, photos, and video here.