Page 6 - Spec Tech Vol 1 Issue 10

Image Credit: NASA, SpaceX, ispace
That would be an epic achievement, blazing a
new trail for Japan and for private industry. To
date, only the space agencies of the United
States, the Soviet Union and China have
pulled off soft landings on the lunar surface.
Success is hardly guaranteed, however, as
ispace acknowledges. Mission 1 is a test
flight with 10 milestones, and landing is ninth
on that list. The tenth is operation on the
moon's surface to help support customer
payloads.
The most high-profile such payload is a 22-
pound (10 kilograms) robot called Rashid, the
UAE's first-ever moon rover. After deploying
from Hakuto-R, Rashid will take photos with a
variety of cameras and characterize the
moon's curious, electrically charged surface
environment. Its mission is expected to last
one lunar day, which is about 14 Earth days.
If all goes to plan, Mission 1 will be just the
beginning for ispace, which oversaw the
Hakuto ("White Rabbit") team in the Google
Lunar X Prize. (The Prize offered $20 million
Space Explorer 2022
to the first private team to land a robotic craft
on the moon; it expired in 2018 without a
winner.)
ispace plans to launch Mission 2 to the moon
in 2024 and Mission 3 a year later, Hakamada
said. That third mission will be part of NASA's
Commercial Lunar Payload Services
program, which uses private landers to get
agency science gear to the moon.
After 2025, ispace aims to launch two
missions to the lunar surface every year,
providing rides to a variety of payloads and
helping to develop the lunar frontier.
"Our vision is to establish an economically
viable, sustainable ecosystem in cislunar
[space]," Hakamada said.
Mission 1 was originally scheduled to launch
on Nov. 30, but SpaceX pushed things
back to Sunday to perform additional checks
on the Falcon 9. Mission 1 was the fifth flight
for this particular rocket's reusable first stage.
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