ispace announces flight of its first micro-rover on next Hakuto-R mission

Japanese robotic space company, ispace, announced that it will fly a second Hakuto-R lunar lander to the Moon to reattempt its landing. This time, the mission will feature a micro-rover, developed by ispace, that will capture lunar regolith for NASA.

ispace to try again at landing on the Moon

ispace announced last week that it will make a second attempt at landing its Hakuto-R lunar lander on the surface of the Moon as soon as late 2024. This comes after the company failed to do so with its first lander earlier this year.

The company however, is back and isn’t giving up on being the first from Japan to land on the Moon. This time for Hakuto-R, ispace’s Europe office is building a micro-rover that will be deployed onto the surface.

This rover will be have one task, (legally) sell the first bit of lunar regolith to NASA. Well, kind of. The bit of regolith won’t be returning to Earth and given directly to the agency but the sample will officially transfer ownership from ispace EU to NASA.

Hakuto-R Mission 2 is slated to launch as soon as Winter 2024, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The lander is still being manufactured but should be ready to fly by then.

The ispace lander will also fly four other payloads, a water electrolyzer, food production experiments, and a deep space radiation probe. The lander will also have a commemorative alloy plate modeled after the “Charter of the Universal Century” which I believe is from an anime called Gundam (far from my area of expertise).

The rover, built by ispace’s Europe office and received some funding from the Luxembourg Space Agency through ESA. The shovel that will be used to scope NASA’s sample is being developed by Epiroc AP, a Swedish mining company.

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Does a second attempt mean success?

ispace launched its first Hakuto-R lander in December 2022, also on a Falcon 9 rocket. Like others before it, it had a shot to become the first private company to land on the lunar surface. However, on April 25, 2023, communication was lost with the lander and it was expected to have been lost during landing.

The reason for ispace’s failed landing came to software rather than hardware. We discuss in more detail here but basically the lander stopped trusting its altimeter and followed preprogramed values instead. This lead to the lander running out of fuel before touching down on the surface, resulting in the loss of the lander.

With a second attempt comes better odds of sticking the landing but they might miss the chance of claiming first privately funded lander on the Moon.

On Christmas Eve ULA plans to launch its first Vulcan rocket from Florida. On top of that rocket will be Astrobotic’s first Peregrine lunar lander which intends to land on the Moon as well.

We don’t know yet if Astrobotic will be successful where ispace was not but historically landing on the Moon for the first time has been very difficult. India, Russia, ispace, and the UAE have all recently failed landings on the Moon. So this isn’t a given for any lander just yet.