Columbia × Intuitive Machines × NASA

America last landed on the Moon in December 1972. So when the call came asking if I wanted to film a mission going to the Moon, I thought it was a prank.

It wasn’t. Columbia, Intuitive Machines, and NASA came together on a lander bound for the lunar surface, and we filmed it in Houston, Space City, home of the Mission Control that guided Apollo. The history in those walls is thick.

We interviewed Jack Fischer, a former NASA astronaut and test pilot for both the F-22 and F-35, whose stories on and off camera had the whole crew leaning in. And we learned things you won’t find in a press release. Every crew member’s name was printed backwards on the landing pads, so they’d stamp into the lunar dust facing the right way. A Jeff Koons sculpture rode along too.

Security was tight. There were strict limits on what you could touch and how close you could get. We still came away with striking footage of the craft on the ground and breathtaking images from space.

On February 22, 2024, Odysseus touched down. I’m proud of this one, and of a crew that stepped up to make it happen.