That's the private lunar lander from Japan, Closed on the moon, alongside the Mini Rover, aiming for a touchdown in the unexplored far north.
An attempt to land on the moon occurred on Friday Japan time, by the Tokyo-based company ISPACE, as part of the rapidly growing commercial lunar race, Latest Entries.
This endeavor comes two years after the company’s first moonshot ended in a Crush Landing, leading to the naming of its successor lander, Resilience. Resilience carries a rover equipped with shovels to collect lunar soil, along with a toy-sized red house created by Swedish artists, set to be placed on the moon’s dusty surface.
Historically, the moon has been a target for private ventures since 2019, with more failures than successes along the way.
Launched in January from Florida on a lengthy detour, Resilience came back on track last month, riding alongside Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost via a SpaceX launch. It became the first private entity to quickly reach and land on the moon in March.
Another American company, Intuitive Machines, arrived on the moon just days after Firefly. However, its tall, fragile lander unfortunately crashed into a crater near the moon’s Antarctic region and was declared non-operational within hours.
Resilience is now targeting a specific summit on the moon. The iSpace team selected areas that are flatter with fewer rocks, including the mare regolith and cold seas, as well as long, narrow regions filled with ancient lava flows extending into craters and the nearby north tiers.
Once power and communication systems are established, Resilience, measuring 7.5 feet (2.3 meters), will lower a piggybacking rover onto the lunar surface.
Constructed from carbon fiber-reinforced plastic and featuring four wheels, iSpace’s European-made rover, Tenacial, boasts a high-resolution camera for scouting the terrain as well as NASA’s moon soil collection shovels.
Weighing in at just 11 pounds (5 kilograms), the rover operates near the lander, moving in circles at speeds of less than an inch (a few centimeters) per second.
In addition to scientific and technological experiments, there’s a creative element involved.
The rover carries a small, Swedish-style red cottage adorned with white trim and green doors, positioned on the moon and dubbed “Moonhouse” by its creator, Michael Jenberg.
Takeshi Hakamada, CEO and founder of ISPACE, considers this latest moonshot as merely “a stepping stone.”
“We're not trying to diminish the market, we're focused on constructing it,” stated Jeremy Fix, chief engineer of iSpace’s US subsidiary, at a meeting last month. “It’s a vast market with enormous potential.”
Fix pointed out that, like other companies, iSpace does not have “infinite resources” and cannot continue to absorb repeated setbacks. While the costs of this mission remain undisclosed, company representatives indicated they are lower than those of the previous mission, which exceeded $100 million.
Two additional American companies, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Starship Technology, are also aiming to achieve lunar landings by the year’s end. Astrobotic’s first lunar lander failed to reach the moon in 2024, crashing back through the Earth’s atmosphere.
For decades, government agencies have been racing to conquer the moon. Only five countries have successfully landed robotic missions on the lunar surface: Russia, the US, China, India, and Japan. Among those, only the US has sent astronauts to the moon, with a total of 12 NASA astronauts landing between 1969 and 1972.
NASA plans to send four astronauts around the moon next year, following more than a year’s delay, marking the first crewed lunar landing in over fifty years, with SpaceX providing transportation from lunar orbit to the surface. China is also aiming to land astronauts on the moon by 2030.
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Source: apnews.com