iSpace Mission Hakuto: Japanese Moon Lander Rocket Launched With UAE Lunar Rovers Aboard

Yesterday (Dec. 11, 2022), a Tokyo company called ispace launched a private lander on a SpaceX rocket. The lander was carrying the United Arab Emirates' first lunar rover and a small robot from Japan. The moon lander and its experiments will take almost five months to get to the moon.

Because ispace wanted to save money and leave more room for cargo, the lander is taking a slow, low-energy path to the moon. It will fly 1 million miles from Earth before looping back and intersecting with the moon by the end of April. This is in contrast to NASA's Orion crew capsule, which took only five days to reach the moon last month. The lunar flyby mission is scheduled to end with a Pacific splashdown.

The ispace lander aims for Atlas crater, located on the northeastern side of the moon's near side. The crater is over 50 miles in diameter and just over a mile deep. When its legs are extended, the lander is over seven feet tall. The UAE, which already has a science satellite around Mars, also wants to explore the moon.

The rover it sends to the moon is called Rashid, and it weighs only 22 pounds. It is designed to operate on the moon's surface for about ten days, like the rest of the mission's equipment.

ispace Mission Hakuto

Emirates project manager Hamad AlMarzooqi stated that landing on an unexplored part of the moon would provide valuable scientific data. He also said that the lunar surface is a good place to test technology that could be used for future human expeditions to Mars. In addition, the rover represents a significant national effort in the space sector and, if successful, will be the first Emirati and Arab mission to land on the moon. AlMarzooqi made these comments in a statement following the launch, as reported by CNBC.

In addition to the UAE's rover, the lander also carries a small robot from the Japanese Space Agency. As CNN reports, the robot is the size of an orange and will transform into a wheeled robot on the moon. The lander also carries a solid-state battery from a Japanese spark plug company, a flight computer with artificial intelligence from an Ottawa-based company, and 360-degree cameras from a company in Toronto. A small NASA laser experiment is also on the rocket, bound for the moon to search for ice in the permanently shadowed craters at the lunar south pole.

The ispace mission is called Hakuto, which means "white rabbit" in Japanese. In Asian folklore, the moon is said to be inhabited by a white rabbit. ispace plans to land on the moon again in 2024 and 2025. The company was founded in 2010 and was a finalist in the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition, which required a successful landing on the moon by 2018. ispace's lunar rover was never launched.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, with a payload including two lunar rovers from Japan and the United Arab Emirates, lifts off from Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Sunday, Dec. 11, 2022. AP Photo/John Raoux

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Another finalist in the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition, a nonprofit called SpaceIL, managed to reach the moon in 2019. However, the spacecraft, called Beresheet, crashed into the moon and was destroyed. ispace's launch on Sunday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station makes it one of the first private entities to attempt a moon landing. Although they are not launching until early next year, lunar landers built by Astrobotic Technology in Pittsburgh and Intuitive Machines in Houston may beat ispace to the moon because of their shorter travel times.

According to a report from Reuters, only Russia, the US, and China have achieved "soft landings" on the moon, starting with the Soviet Union's Luna 9 in 1966. Only the US has sent astronauts to the moon, with 12 men making six landings. Sunday marked the 50th anniversary of the last lunar landing by astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt on December 11, 1972. ispace CEO and founder Takeshi Hakamada said that NASA's Apollo missions were about the excitement of the technology, but now "it's the excitement of the business."

He said this marks the beginning of the "lunar economy" and called people to "go to the moon." SpaceX for extra rocket checks delayed the launch. Eight minutes after launch, the first-stage booster landed at Cape Canaveral under a nearly full moon. The double sonic boom could be heard echoing through the night.