by A private Japanese lunar lander has opened its eyes in space.
The Hakuto-R lander has captured its first photos since launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Sunday morning (December 11), officials from ispace, the Tokyo-based company that operates the spacecraft, said early Tuesday morning (December 13) known. .
“As initial verification operations continue at ispace’s Mission Control Center (MCC), we have also received the first images captured by our lander-mounted camera! This is an image of Earth approximately 19 hours after separation from the launch vehicle.” said ispace via Twitter (opens in new tab).
“What looks like a crescent moon here is actually the earth. Below right is a panel with our Hakuto-R corporate partners (as of March 2022),” the company added another tweet (opens in new tab).
Lunar Timeline: Human exploration of the moon
As initial verification operations continue at ispace’s Mission Control Center (MCC), we have also received the first images captured by our lander-mounted camera! This is an image of Earth about 19 hours after separation from the launch vehicle. pic.twitter.com/BcM6mrw1QbDecember 13, 2022
If all goes according to plan, Hakuto-R will arrive on the moon in April and make the first-ever soft lunar landing for a Japanese spacecraft. The lander will then deploy a small rover called Rashid for the United Arab Emirates Space Agency.
But ispace is not looking that far yet. This is a test flight, the very first mission for ispace, and the company is taking it slow. The mission team is ticking boxes one by one – and Hakuto-R is hitting its targets so far.
To date, the team has established communications with the lander and placed it in a stable orientation with a constant power supply. Team members also have “confirmation that there were no deficiencies in the lander’s core systems,” ispace wrote in an update Monday (opens in new tab) (Dec. 12).
Hakuto-R’s journey will set the stage for many more missions if all goes according to ispace’s plan. The company aims to launch its second mission to the lunar surface in 2024 and its third – a flight for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program – a year later.
After that, ispace is aiming for two lunar missions per year, company founder and CEO Takeshi Hakamada recently told Space.com.
“Our vision is to build an economically viable, sustainable ecosystem in Cislunar [space]’ Hakamada said.
Hakuto-R did not fly into space alone on Sunday. The Falcon 9 also carried Lunar Flashlight, a briefcase-sized NASA spacecraft that will hunt for water ice from orbit around the moon.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out there (opens in new tab)(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaelwall (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or on Facebook (opens in new tab).
