SpaceX’s mission to the Moon highlights the huge economic expense of Apollo 17 [Video]

It’s been more than 50 years since the last successful US-led Moon landing mission but now, a vessel built by SpaceX and Intuitive Machines has blasted off in the hope of reaching the lunar surface as part of a mission that will be costing NASA a tiny fraction of what the space agency spent on the Apollo missions.

Should it succeed, the historic mission will lead to the first lunar landing under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program through which the space agency has contracted aerospace company Intuitive Machines to deliver a series of scientific payloads to the Moon’s surface in what is hoped to be the first American Moon landing since Apollo 17 in 1972, 52 years ago.

The mission, dubbed IM-1, began on February 15 at 1:05am EST when a Falcon 9 rocket built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched, carrying Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C lunar lander, named Odysseus, into space.

Following the launch, the craft’s journey to the Moon…