Japanese Lunar Lander Hakuto-R Set for Historic Moon Landing

Hakuto-R has been in lunar orbit since March 21. The space lander was launched last December from the spaceport in Florida by the private space company SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. During the long journey, the probe used the gravity of the Earth and the Sun, thus carrying less fuel.

If all goes according to plan, the 2.3-meter-tall apparatus will land on the surface of the Moon in the Atlas Crater area.

“The primary landing site for our Hakuto-R mission is the Atlas Crater, located in the northeast quadrant of the Moon. The site meets the technical specifications of the lander technology demonstration mission, the science exploration objectives for the UAE’s Muhammad bin Rashid Space Center (MBRSC), as well as the mission requirements of our other customers.” ispace described on Twitter.

“I look forward to witnessing a historic day that marks the beginning of a new era of commercial lunar missions,” he was previously quoted as saying head of ispace Takeshi Hakamada.

“Today (Tuesday, April 25) at 17:40 CEST – but probably a little later – the Hakuto-R M1 probe will begin a motorized landing maneuver at an altitude of 100 km and will land on the surface of the Moon in the Atlas Crater after 60 minutes at the latest. This will complete a journey through outer space lasting more than 135 days,” summed up on Twitter cosmonautics expert Michal Václavík from the Czech Space Agency and the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague.

The Hakuto-R lander will carry the small Japanese rover SORA-Q, weighing 0.25 kg, made by the Japanese space agency JAXA and the Japanese toy manufacturer Tomy, to the lunar surface.

The larger, approximately 10-kilogram Rashid rover from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is also on board the lander. According to Václavík, the operation of the lander and the larger of the rovers will last a maximum of 14 days.

So far, only the United States, Russia (USSR) and China have managed to transport technology to the Moon, which is located about 400 thousand kilometers from the Earth, as part of official government programs. The last successful landing on the Earth’s natural satellite was achieved by the Chinese probe Chang-e 5 in December 2020.

Should this not eventually happen now, the alternate dates for Hakuto-R are Wednesday April 26th, Monday May 1st and Wednesday May 3rd.