A space module from a Tokyo company was launched this Sunday on its way to the moon, via a SpaceX rocket that also carries the first lunar probe from the United Arab Emirates, according to the Associated Press.
The mission, which will also carry a Japanese robot designed to stand on the lunar surface, will take about five months to reach the moon.
The company in question, ispace, designed its device to use the least amount of fuel, to save money and save space for cargo, so it’s taking a slower and more fuel-efficient route to the moon, flying 1.6 million miles from the Earth flies before returning to cross the Moon in late April.
In contrast, NASA’s Orion capsule, designed to carry humans and which traveled with mannequins, took five days to reach the moon in November and ends its mission this Sunday with an emergency landing in the Pacific Ocean.
The ispace probe will look for the lunar crater Atlas, in the northeastern part of the moon’s closest side to Earth, which is more than 87 kilometers in diameter and two kilometers deep.
With all four legs extended, the spacecraft is over 8 feet (2.3 meters) tall.
With a science satellite already orbiting Mars, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) also wants to explore the moon, and their Rashid probe, named after the country’s royal family, weighs 10 kilograms and will work on the lunar surface for about 10 days, as the rest of the mission.
In addition, the probe will carry an orange orb from the Japanese space agency that will transform into a wheeled robot on the moon.
Also going to the moon are a solid-state battery from a Japanese spark plug company, an on-board computer with artificial intelligence from a Canadian company to identify geological features observed by the UAE spacecraft, and 360-degree cameras from a Toronto, also in Canada.
The mission will also conduct a small NASA laser experiment, which will go to the moon to search for ice in the craters that are permanently without sunlight, at the moon’s south pole.
A second landing is planned in 2024 and a third in 2025 by the Japanese company founded in 2010, which was among the finalists for the Google XPRIZE Lunar Award.
The mission launched this Sunday is named after Hakuto, which means white rabbit in Japanese, an animal that lives on the moon according to popular Asian tradition.
Only Russia, the United States and China achieved so-called “soft landings”, beginning with the Luna 9 mission, from the former Soviet Union, in 1966. The United States alone placed astronauts on the lunar surface: 12 on more than six missions.
Source: DN
