(Bloomberg) — A Japanese lunar lander carrying two rovers and another payload lifted off Sunday on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, in a bid to become the first commercial spacecraft to land on the moon.
The launch of ispace Inc.’s Hakuto-R lander. based in Tokyo from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida followed two postponements. Originally scheduled for late November, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. it had been withdrawn twice for additional rocket checks before flight.
The Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander, Japan’s first lunar lander to be launched, will take a tortuous path to the Moon and is expected to land inside Atlas Crater in late April. It carries two rovers, one from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the United Arab Emirates’ Rashid rover, as well as an experimental solid-state battery from NGK Spark Plug Co., a music disc containing the song SORATO performed by Japanese rock band Sakanaction and other cargo.
The escalating space rivalry between the United States and China and Elon Musk’s ambitious Mars program have prompted startups around the world to seek new contracts to tap resources on the lunar surface and further into space.
Like Musk’s goal of building a colony on Mars, ispace wants to build a human settlement of about 1,000 people on the moon by 2040, and the company plans to transport equipment to the moon to turn it into a habitable mall .
The startup plans to land on the moon with the goal of becoming the FedEx of space
The success of Ispace would strengthen Japan’s own space program. JAXA had hired Mitsubishi Electric Corp. to build the nation’s first lunar lander for a possible 2019 launch, but that program has been mired in delays. Last year, Japan’s Lunar Industry Vision Council recommended more cooperation between the state and private sectors to maintain competitiveness in the growing space economy.
The Ispace landing is part of a $73 million NASA contract won by a team led by Draper, based in Cambridge, Mass., to provide end-to-end delivery services under the moon program Artemis of the USA. The same rocket also launched NASA’s Lunar Flashlight probe on a mission to search for ice in the moon’s craters.
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