A Falcon 9 rocket will now launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 3:37 a.m. (0837 GMT) on Thursday. SpaceX stated on Twitter that the delay was due to additional pre-flight checks.
Falcon 9 is vertical on pad 40 in Florida ahead of launch of the @ispace_inc HAKUTO-R Mission 1 – the first privately-led Japanese mission to land on the lunar surface → https://t.co/D9BYeHj1EW pic.twitter.com/mU5BOgE4IB
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 30, 2022
Standing down from launch of ispace's HAKUTO-R Mission 1 to allow for additional pre-flight checkouts; now targeting Thursday, December 1 at 3:37 a.m. ET for liftoff
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) November 30, 2022
Until now, only the United States, Russia, and China have succeeded in landing a robot on the moon’s surface. The mission, launched by the Japanese company ispace, is the first in a series called Hakuto-R.
The lander would touch down around April 2023 on the visible side of the Moon, in the Atlas crater, according to a company statement.
It measures slightly more than 2 by 2.5 metres and carries a 10-kilogram rover named Rashid, which was built by the United Arab Emirates.
The oil-rich country is new to the space race, but recent achievements include a Mars probe in 2020. Rashid will be the Arab world’s first Moon mission if it is successful.
“We have achieved so much in the six short years since we first began conceptualizing this project in 2016,” said ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada.
Hakuto was one of five finalists in the international Google Lunar XPrize competition, which aimed to land a rover on the Moon by the end of 2018, but there was no winner. However, some of the projects are still in progress.
Another finalist, from the Israeli organisation SpaceIL, crashed into the surface while attempting to land in April 2019, failing to become the first privately-funded mission to accomplish the feat.
Ispace, which has just 200 employees, says it “aims to extend the sphere of human life into space and create a sustainable world by providing high-frequency, low-cost transportation services to the Moon.”
NASA’s Artemis program will benefit from future missions. The unmanned test flight to the Moon, Artemis-1, is currently underway.
To read our blog on “SpaceX launched NASA’s project to deploy lunar flashlights,” click here
