CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A private company launched another lunar lander Wednesday, aiming to get closer to the moon’s south pole this time with a drone that will hop into a jet-black crater that never sees the sun.

Intuitive Machines’ lander, named Athena, caught a lift with SpaceX from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. It’s taking a fast track to the moon — with a landing on March 6 — while hoping to avoid the fate of its predecessor, which tipped over at touchdown.

Never before have so many spacecraft angled for the moon’s surface all at once. Last month, U.S. and Japanese companies shared a rocket and separately launched landers toward Earth’s sidekick. Texas-based Firefly Aerospace should get there first this weekend after a big head start.

The two U.S. landers are carrying tens of millions of dollars’ worth of experiments for NASA as it prepares to return astronauts to the moon.

“It’s an amazing time. There’s so much energy,” NASA’s science mission chief Nicky Fox told The Associated Press a few hours ahead of the launch.

This isn’t Intuitive Machines’ first lunar rodeo. Last year, the Texas company made the first U.S. touchdown on the moon in more than 50 years. But an instrument that gauges distance did not work and the lander came down too hard and broke a leg, tipping onto its side.

Intuitive Machines said it has fixed the issue and dozens of others. A sideways landing like last time would prevent the drone and a pair of rovers from moving out. NASA’s drill also needs an upright landing to pierce beneath the lunar surface to gather soil samples for analysis.

“Certainly, we will be better this time than we were last time. But you never know what could happen,” said Trent Martin, senior vice president of space systems.

It’s an extraordinarily elite club. Only five countries have pulled off a lunar landing over the decades: Russia, the U.S., China, India and Japan. The moon is littered with wreckage from many past failures.

The 15-foot (4.7-meter) Athena will target a landing 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the lunar south pole. Just a quarter-mile (400 meters) away is a permanently shadowed crater — the ultimate destination for the drone named Grace.

Named after the late computer programming pioneer Grace Hopper, the 3-foot (1-meter) drone will make three increasingly higher and longer test hops across the lunar surface using hydrazine fueled-thrusters for flight and cameras and lasers for navigation.

If those excursions go well, it will hop into the nearby pitch-black crater, an estimated 65 feet (20 meters) deep. Science instruments from Hungary and Germany will take measurements at the bottom while hunting for frozen water.

It will be the first up-close peek inside one of the many shadowed craters dotting both the north and south poles. Scientists suspect these craters are packed with tons of ice. If so, this ice could be transformed by future explorers into water to drink, air to breathe and even rocket fuel.

NASA is paying $62 million to Intuitive Machines to get its drill and other experiments to the moon. The company, in turn, sold space on the lander to others. It also opened up the Falcon rocket to ride-sharing.

Tagalongs included NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer satellite, which will fly separately to the moon over the next several months before entering lunar orbit to map the distribution of water below. Also catching a ride was a private spacecraft that will chase after an asteroid for a flyby, a precursor to asteroid mining.

LONDON (AP) — A new album called “Is This What We Want?” features a stellar list of more than 1,000 musicians — and the sound of silence.

With contributions from British artists including Kate Bush, Annie Lennox, Cat Stevens and Damon Albarn, the album was released Tuesday to protest proposed British changes to artificial intelligence laws that artists fear will erode their creative control.

The U.K. government is consulting on whether to let tech firms use copyrighted material to help train AI models unless the creators explicitly opt out.

Critics of the idea fear that will make it harder for artists to retain control of their work and will undermine Britain’s creative industries. Elton John and Paul McCartney are among those who have spoken out against the plan.

The protest album features “almost silence,” said composer and AI developer Ed Newton-Rex, who organized the album. The 12 tracks consist of recordings of empty studios and performance spaces, “to symbolize what we expect will happen if the government’s proposals go through.”

“It’s a mix of artists that everyone’s heard of and, you know, and many musicians who are not household names,” he told The Associated Press. “And I think that’s really important because this issue is going to affect all of us.”

The titles of the 12 tracks spell out: “The British government must not legalize music theft to benefit AI companies.”

Profits will be donated to the musicians’ charity Help Musicians.

“The government’s proposal would hand the life’s work of the country’s musicians to AI companies, for free, letting those companies exploit musicians’ work to outcompete them,” Newton-Rex said.

“It is a plan that would not only be disastrous for musicians, but that is totally unnecessary,” he said. “The U.K. can be leaders in AI without throwing our world-leading creative industries under the bus.”

Britain’s center-left Labour Party government says it wants to make the U.K. a world leader in AI. In December, it announced a consultation into how copyright law can “enable creators and right holders to exercise control over, and seek remuneration for, the use of their works for AI training” while also ensuring “AI developers have easy access to a broad range of high-quality creative content.” The consultation closes on Tuesday.

Publishers, artists’ organizations and media companies, including The Associated Press, have banded together as the Creative Rights in AI Coalition to oppose weakening copyright protections.

Several U.K. newspapers ran wraparounds over their front pages on Tuesday, criticizing the government consultation and saying: “Let’s protect the creative industries — it’s only fair.”

The British government said in a statement that it was “consulting on a new approach that protects the interests of both AI developers and right holders and delivers a solution which allows both to thrive.” It added that “no decisions have been taken.”

NEW YORK (AP) — NBC’s veteran Lester Holt is stepping down as anchor of the network’s flagship “Nightly News” broadcast in the coming months.

Holt, who has been the face of “Nightly News” for a decade, won’t be leaving NBC altogether, however. In a memo to staff Monday, he said he would be expanding his work on NBC’s “Dateline,” taking on a full-time role.

The transition is expected to take place early this summer. No firm date or successor for “NBC Nightly News” has been named yet.

“It has truly been the honor of a lifetime to work with each of you every day, keeping journalism as our true north and our viewers at the center of everything we do,” Holt wrote in his note thanking colleagues. “A smile comes to my face when I think that with Nightly News, and Dateline, I have now anchored two of the most successful and iconic television news programs in broadcast history.”

Janelle Rodriguez, executive vice president of NBC News Programming, applauded Holt’s legacy at “Nightly News” and reiterated that the anchor will stay at NBC “for years to come.”

“Quite simply, Lester is the beating heart of this news organization,” Rodriguez wrote in a prepared statement.

Holt, 65, joined NBC back in 2000. He became the permanent anchor of “Nightly News” in June 2015 — replacing Brian Williams after anchoring weekend editions of the show for eight years. And he has been the principal anchor of “Dateline” since September 2011.

According to NBC, “Nightly News” currently averages at around 7 million viewers each week. The network says the roots of its flagship show date back to 1948, when NBC first began broadcasting regularly-scheduled news programming each night. And the “NBC Nightly News” name was born in 1970.

NBC’s “Dateline” series, currently in its 33rd season, debuted in 1992. The series has made a name for itself in true crime programming — which has expanded into a top-ranked podcast and some scripted television content, including a spinoff of “The Thing About Pam.” But “Dateline” also covers a mix of breaking news, investigative journalism and other human interest stories.

NBC isn’t the only major news network to see a shift in its anchor line up this year. Holt’s announcement arrives just weeks after Norah O’Donnell’s final broadcast of “CBS Evening News,” for example, where she had been the network’s top anchor since 2019. And, on NBC’s dayside programming, Hoda Kotb’s last day as one of the lead anchors for “Today” was Jan. 10.

MSNBC, which is set to no longer have any corporate connection to NBC News once a spinoff formally takes effect later this year, is also seeing some changes to its prime time line up. In a Monday memo to staff, MSNBC’s new president Rebecca Kutler announced that Joy Reid would be leaving the network — marking an end to the political analyst and anchor’s show, “The ReidOut.”