On its way to the Moon, a private Japanese mission set off on a months-long journey

A lunar lander built by a Japanese company, which could become Japan’s first private rover but also land on the moon’s surface, took off Sunday, December 11, from Cape Canaveral. The launch took place by a SpaceX rocket from the US base in Florida, after two delays due to additional checks.

The lunar rover, made by Tokyo startup Ispace, left aboard the Falcon-9 space launch vehicle at 2:38 a.m. local time (7:38 a.m. GMT), according to images broadcast live. So far, only the United States, Russia and China have managed to land robots on the Moon, 400,000 km from Earth.

Ispace, which has nearly 200 employees, intends to establish it “Frequent, low-cost shuttle service to the moon”. This company’s Hakuto project was one of five finalists in the international Google Lunar XPrize competition, which ended without a winner, as no company managed to land a robot on the moon earlier than scheduled (2018). But some projects were not abandoned.

Another finalist, from Israel’s SpaceIL organization, failed in April 2019 to become the first privately funded mission to achieve the feat. The lander crashed into the roof while trying to land.

Mini Rover from the United Arab Emirates

Ispace designed its craft to use the minimum amount of fuel to save money and leave more space for cargo. Therefore, the craft takes a slow, low-energy trajectory to the Moon, flying 1.6 million kilometers from Earth before orbiting and crossing the Moon by the end of April.

The Japanese spacecraft launched the first spacecraft on the moon in the United Arab Emirates, a small mobile robot weighing ten kilograms, equipped with French cameras, that must work on the surface during the ten days of the mission.