ispace HAKUTO-R Mission 1: Landing Live Stream

The lander was launched into space in December 2022 onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It is carrying two different robotic Moon rovers; one called Rashid, built by the UAE’s space agency; and a more novel design called SORA-Q, built for the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency. It is also carrying an experiment to test a unique solid-state battery design.

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Since the Hakuto-R spacecraft left the planet, engineers at iSpace have been working through a series of milestones to demonstrate their control over the vehicle. After ensuring they could communicate with the spacecraft, and that it was generating sufficient electrical power, flight controllers proceeded through a series of maneuvers that brought the vehicle into orbit around the Moon. The next step will be activating the software that will autonomously maneuver the vehicle to a landing in the Atlas crater.

The primary goal of this mission is simply to prove that iSpace can safely deliver cargo to the lunar surface. That’s no easy feat: Just three nations—the Soviet Union, the United States, and China—have done so. A 2019 attempt by India’s space agency with the Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft failed, and the first private attempt to do so, by an Israeli NGO called SpaceIL that same year, saw its Beresheet lander crash into the Moon.

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NASA has hired multiple companies to carry cargo to the Moon. US firms Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines are expected to launch their own landers later this year; the former onboard the first flight of the new United Launch Alliance Vulcan rocket, and the latter onboard Falcon 9 flights tentatively scheduled for July and October. India is also set to try again, with the Chandrayaan-3 mission scheduled to launch in June.

What does the future hold for iSpace?

iSpace is also developing a second mission in 2024 with a similar lander, which will include commercial payloads and collect a sample of lunar soil for NASA. iSpace also is part of a consortium, led by the US firm Draper, that has been hired to deliver scientific instruments to the far side of the Moon by NASA in 2025.

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The company is having a notable month: iSpace went public at the Tokyo Stock Exchange on April 12; at press time, investors valued the enterprise at about $1.2 billion.

iSpace originally emerged as one of the finalists in the Google Lunar XPrize, a contest begin in 2007 that would have awarded $20 million to the first private team to land a robot on the Moon. After several deadline extensions, the contest ended in 2018 without a winner. Still, the initiative spurred technology development at iSpace and other firms that is boosting today’s efforts at lunar exploration.

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“We have very ambitious visions, that we want to create a world where human beings can live in space,” iSpace CEO Takeshi Hakamada told Quartz in 2018, when the Hakuto-R mission was unveiled. “In 2040, we hope [to see] more than 10,000 people living on the moon, more than 10,000 people in space. We think we can create such a future.”

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