3 Reasons Why NASA’s Private Sector Space Partnership Matters (Part 1)

New commercial moon landing revives American dominance in spaceflight…

Photo by NASA on Unsplash (the space shuttle takes off)

As you have heard by now, America completed its first moon landing last week since the early 1970s.

Yay USA!

But really, it’s about time the United States returned to the moon’s surface. It’s been more than one-half century since the last Apollo mission in December 1972.

What the heck took so long?

This feat marked the first time in U.S. history that a commercial spacecraft landed on the moon.

While NASA provided important oversight, guidance, and assistance for the mission, it was a private company that stuck the landing — well, almost.

Unfortunately, the spacecraft had a major technical glitch with the computer software. This caused it to land sideways, thus cutting the mission short (article below).

The spaceship Odysseus was built by Houston-based Intuitive Machines, for which NASA “contracted out” for the mission. This raises some important questions:

• First, why did NASA, the world’s dominant space agency, not send its own government-built spacecraft back to the moon — as with the groundbreaking Apollo…