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Japan’s ispace launches historic first commercial moon lander | Space News

The privately funded rover carrying a SpaceX rocket aims to land in Atlas Crater in April.

A Japanese space startup has launched its own lander to the Moon on a SpaceX rocket, marking an important step towards what will be a first in history, for the entire nation. and a private company.

Tokyo-based ispace Inc’s HAKUTO-R mission took off without incident from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Sunday after two delays due to testing of their SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The company designed its craft to use minimal fuel in order to save money and have more room for goods.

It is making a slow, low-energy path to the moon, flying 1.6 million kilometers (one million miles) from Earth before turning around and landing as planned at the end of April.

In contrast, NASA’s Orion crew with test dummies took five days to reach the moon last month. The mission to fly over the moon is expected to end on Sunday with a splash in the Pacific Ocean.

Aim for the Atlas crater

The ispace spacecraft aims to send a small NASA satellite into lunar orbit to search for water deposits before landing in Atlas Crater, which is located in the northeastern part of the near side of the moon and is horizontal. more than 87 kilometers (54 miles) and just over 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) deep.

The M1 lander will deploy two self-propelled robots, one two-wheeled, orange-sized device from Japan’s JAXA space agency and one four-wheeler made by the United Arab Emirates, called Explorer Rashid after the patriarch of the royal family of Dubai.

It will also carry an experimental solid-state battery made by NGK Spark Plug Co, a spark plug company based in Japan.

The national space agencies of the United States, Russia, and China have achieved soft landings on Earth’s nearest neighbor over the past half-century, but Japan has neither nor has any technology. any private company.

The mission’s success will also be a milestone in space cooperation between Japan and the United States at a time when China is becoming increasingly competitive and the use of Russian missiles has ceased after Russia invaded. Ukraine strategy.

The company hopes the HAKUTO-R project – whose name refers to the white rabbit that Japanese folklore says lives on the moon – will be the first of many government and commercial deliveries of goods. commercial.

It has a contract with NASA to deliver payloads to the moon from 2025 and is aiming to build a permanently staffed lunar colony by 2040.

Moon
The ispace lander will aim for the Atlas Crater on the northeastern part of the moon’s near side [File: Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/Reuters]

‘Dawn of the Moon Economy’

Sunday also marks the 50th anniversary of the last moon landing by astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt of Apollo 17 on December 11, 1972.

Takeshi Hakamada, founder and CEO of ispace, said NASA’s Apollo moon photos are “all about the excitement of technology”.

Now, he noted in the SpaceX launch webcast, “it’s the excitement of the business.”

“This is the dawn of the lunar economy… Let’s go to the moon,” Hakamada said.

The initial takeoff was scheduled for two weeks ago but was delayed by SpaceX for further testing of the rocket.

Eight minutes after launch, the recycled first-stage booster landed back at Cape Canaveral under a near-full moon, two sonic booms reverberating through the night.

Founded in 2010, ispace was one of the finalists in the Google Lunar XPRIZE contest claiming a successful moon landing in 2018. The ispace-built lunar rover has never been. launched.

Another finalist, an Israeli nonprofit called SpaceIL, made it to the moon in 2019. But instead of a gentle landing, the Beresheet spacecraft crashed into the moon and was destroyed. .




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