{"id":79606,"date":"2022-12-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-11T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kuwaitnewsgazette.com\/?guid=2385dc9ffea24831889c52c561bc7db9"},"modified":"2022-12-11T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-12-11T00:00:00","slug":"japans-ispace-launches-worlds-first-commercial-moon-lander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kuwaitnewsgazette.com\/japans-ispace-launches-worlds-first-commercial-moon-lander\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan’s Ispace Launches World’s First Commercial Moon Lander"},"content":{"rendered":"
A Japanese space startup launched a spacecraft to the moon Sunday after several delays, a step toward what would be a first for the nation and for a private company.<\/p>\n
Ispace Inc’s HAKUTO-R mission took off without incident from Cape Canaveral, Florida, after two postponements caused by inspections of its SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.<\/p>\n
More than a hundred people at a viewing party in Tokyo roared in applause when the rocket fired and lifted into the dark skies.<\/p>\n
“I’m so happy. After repeated delays, it’s good that we had a proper launch today,” said Yuriko Takeda, a 28-year-old worker at an electronics company who joined the gathering.<\/p>\n
“I have this image of the American flag from the Apollo landing, so while this is just the launch, the fact that it’s a private company going there with a rover is a really meaningful step.”<\/p>\n
The national space agencies of the United States, Russia and China have achieved soft landings on Earth’s nearest neighbor in the past half century, but no companies have.<\/p>\n
Mission success would also be a milestone in space cooperation between Japan and the United States at a time when China is becoming increasingly competitive and rides on Russian rockets are no longer available in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
It would also cap a space-filled few days for Japan, after billionaire Yusaku Maezawa revealed on Friday the eight crew members he hopes to take on a SpaceX flyby of the moon as soon as next year.<\/p>\n
The name HAKUTO refers to the white rabbit that lives on the moon in Japanese folklore, in contrast to the Western idea of a man in the moon. The project was a finalist in the Google Lunar XPRIZE before being revived as a commercial venture.<\/p>\n
Next year is the Year of the Rabbit in the Asian calendar.<\/p>\n
The craft, assembled in Germany, is expected to land on the moon in late April.<\/p>\n
The company hopes this will be the first of many deliveries of government and commercial payloads. The ispace craft aims to put a small NASA satellite into lunar orbit to search for water deposits before touching down in the Atlas Crater.<\/p>\n
The M1 lander will deploy two robotic rovers, a two-wheeled, baseball-sized device from Japan’s JAXA space agency and the four-wheeled Rashid explorer made by the United Arab Emirates.<\/p>\n
It will also be carrying an experimental solid-state battery made by NGK Spark Plug Co.<\/p>\n
“The Rashid rover is part of the United Arab Emirates ambitious space program,” said Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, who is also vice president of the United Arab Emirates and who watched the launch at the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre.<\/p>\n
“Our aim is knowledge transfer and developing our capabilities and to add a scientific imprint in the history of humanity,” he tweeted.<\/p>\n
Privately funded ispace has a contract with NASA to ferry payloads to the moon from 2025 and is aiming to build a permanently staffed lunar colony by 2040.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Source: Voice of America<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Japanese space startup launched a spacecraft to the moon Sunday after several delays, a step toward what would be a first for the nation and for a private company.Ispace Inc’s HAKUTO-R mission took off without incident from Cape Canaveral, Florida, a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n