Moon landing: US clinches first touchdown in 50 years
A spacecraft built and flown by Texas-based company Intuitive Machines landed near the moon's south pole, the first U.S. 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. However, initial communications problems following Thursday's landing raised questions about whether the vehicle may have been left…