GEOFF BENNETT: Its the first U.S.-built spacecraft to land on the moon in more than 50 years and the first ever by a private company.

The lander, known as Odysseus, was cause for celebration a short time ago.

MAN: We are on the surface and we are transmitting.

And welcome to the moon.

MAN: Houston, Odysseus has found his new home.

GEOFF BENNETT: The mission is not expected to last about seven days until the sun sets on the landing site and a frigid lunar night begins.

Odysseus took off from Cape Canaveral last week.

While the Houston-based company Intuitive Machines created the spacecraft, this trip is key to NASA's goal of returning to the moon with a manned mission.

Miles O'Brien joins us now.

So, Miles, I got to tell you the suspense in the studio here has been palpable over this last hour.

Help us understand why this successful landing is so significant.

What all went into this?

MILES O'BRIEN: Well, no matter what the condition of the craft, Geoff, the fact that they have gotten this far with the relatively small budget and tiny team that they have operating on this different structure, where NASA is more of a customer, a client than it is in charge, all of that speaks well to the direction they're headed.

How successful was this landing?

Well, I think we can say it's a success by virtue of the fact that it's on the surface and maybe transmitting faint signals.

Is it toppled over?

Is there damage to it?

We don't know yet.

But I think, in the grand scheme here, proving that this can be done, and done for essentially pennies on the dollar, is very important when you look at the larger ambition that NASA has with the Artemis program.

GEOFF BENNETT: In preparing to speak with you, I learned that all -- or, rather, over half of all lunar landing attempts have ended in failure.

Why is this so challenging, especially when we did this more than 50 years ago?

MILES O'BRIEN: Yes, I have been thinking a lot about that, Geoff.

Of course, half, 50 percent of the time will get you into the Major League Hall of Fame, but that's not very good for space travel.

What happened 55 years ago or so, Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11 lunar module, the guidance system was headed straight for a big boulder.

And if he'd not intervened, that would not have been a success.

So trying to replicate the neural network that is the human brain with 80 billion neurons and human eyes with computers that are going to a place we don't know much about is a real challenge.

And, of course, the moon is tough anyway, because there's no atmosphere.

You can't use parachutes.

You have to have a powered descent all the way down.

And they're going to the south pole, which is much more rugged than any of the Apollo destinations.

So a lot of people say, well, if we did that so easily back then, why can't we do it now?

There's all that and the fact that it cost us, inflation-adjusted, about a trillion dollars to do it.

GEOFF BENNETT: Wow.

Well, this lander, as I understand it, has left behind six instruments on the moon's surface.

What exactly do they do?

MILES O'BRIEN: Well, they're going to be trying to characterize the surface of the moon.

There was a lot of technology involved in just the landing itself.

There was a failure on the way down of one of the laser guidance systems.

The team was able to piggyback off of an experimental system that NASA was flying.

And there actually are some space sculptures on board as well.

The idea was to create this public-private partnership so that the company, Intuitive Machines, could sell payloads like a cross-country trucker, NASA doing most of it, filling up most of the truck as it were.

But other commercial players are there, including Embry-Riddle University, which had a tiny little CubeSat with cameras on it designed to capture the landing itself.

We will see if we see those pictures.

It would be great if we could.

GEOFF BENNETT: Well, tell us more about this Houston-based company behind the spacecraft.

MILES O'BRIEN: It's a lot of former NASA people, a lot of steely-eyed rocket scientists.

Steve Altemus is a legendary flight director from NASA in the shuttle days and senior manager at NASA.

There's some experience here, but it's worth pointing out it's been two generations since anybody actually lived through this in the United States and landed a craft on the moon.

And so the institutional memory is gone.

We're -- in a way, we're having to relearn all of this with new technology and without humans in the loop at the surface.

So it's a different game right now with a different set of experience that's required.

GEOFF BENNETT: And, Miles, in the 30 seconds we have left, what is NASA hoping to glean with another manned mission to the moon?

MILES O'BRIEN: Well, I think they want to prove they can stay there.

Building an outpost in space, as much as anything, is to prove human beings can live in these environments because the long-range goal for NASA remains putting human beings on Mars.

The idea is, if you can do it at the moon, which is much closer, much faster radio signals, you have got a better shot on Mars.

GEOFF BENNETT: That is Miles O'Brien, our man on all things space and aviation.

Always a pleasure, Miles.

Thanks.

MILES O'BRIEN: You're welcome, Geoff.