Watch historic Moon landing as US clinches first touchdown in 50 years

Watch as a Texas-based flight company made history after becoming the first to land a privately owned spacecraft on the Moon.

The spacecraft, built and flown by Intuitive Machines, landed near the Moon's south pole on Thursday (22 February).

It is the first US touchdown on the lunar surface in more than half a century and the first ever achieved by the private sector.

NASA, with several research instruments aboard the vehicle, hailed the landing as a major achievement in its goal of sending a squad of commercially flown spacecraft on scientific scouting missions to the Moon ahead of a planned return of astronauts there later this decade.