Japanese company's lunar lander launches to the moon
Another day, another rocket launch by SpaceX, and another spacecraft going to the moon. All those seem commonplace these days.
SpaceX has already launched its Falcon 9 rocket more than 50 times this year. NASA's Artemis I, an uncrewed test flight that is a precursor to future astronaut missions, returned to Earth after orbiting the moon. CAPSTONE, a small NASAsponsored CubeSat, is still orbiting the moon after being launched in June. A robotic South Korean orbiter, Danuri, was launched to the moon in August.
But the lunar lander that was carried by a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Sunday is not a NASA mission. Instead, known as M1, it is from a small Japanese company, Ispace. The payloads on M1 include a rover from the United Arab Emirates and a small two-wheeled Transformers-like robot for the Japanese space agency.
While the mission lifted off at 2:38 a.m. Eastern time, you'll have to wait until April to see if these robotic explorers make it there, possibly becoming the first cargo successfully carried to the lunar surface by a private company.
What is Ispace, and what is it sending to the moon?
The company started as one of the competitors for the Google Lunar X Prize, a competition that offered a $20 million prize for the first private spacecraft to land on the moon, travel 500 meters and send back video from the lunar surface.
At the time, the Japanese group, known as Team Hakuto, focused on developing a rover, and it was to rely on a competing team from India for the ride to the surface of the moon. If that had worked, the two rovers would have been racing to see which could travel the 500 meters first.
However, the Lunar X Prize expired before any of the teams made it to the launchpad. An Israeli competitor, SpaceIL, launched its craft in 2019, but its moon lander crashed on the lunar surface.
For Sunday's mission, the payloads include the Rashid lunar rover from the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center in Dubai; a two-wheeled “transformable lunar robot” from JAXA, the Japanese space agency; a test module for a solid-state battery from NGK Spark Plug Co.; an artificial intelligence flight computer; and 360-degree cameras from Canadensys Aerospace.