Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, November 18, according to Kyodo News, Japan's ispace announced that it will launch its independently developed lunar module / lunar lander Mission 1 (M1) with the help of SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 05:46 Japan time on the 28th. This is part of its lunar exploration program "HAKUTO-R".

In addition to announcing the launch date, ispace announced 10 mission milestones, M1 mission landing sites, seventh payload and HAKUTO-R countdown clock at a press conference held outside the company's mission control center.

According to reports, in order to save energy, ispace plans to slowly push the lunar module to the moon in four to five months and plans to land on the lunar surface at the end of April 2023. If successful, it will become the first private enterprise in Japan to land on the moon.

CTOnews.com learned that the ispace lunar module is about 2.3m high, 2.6m wide and weighs about 340kg. A major feature is that goods can be transported from the earth. At present, up to 30 kilograms of materials can be loaded.

This time, it will transport deformable lunar robots developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and lunar rovers from the United Arab Emirates. In addition, it is planned to collect sand from the moon.

According to ispace documents, Falcon 9 will launch HAKUTO-R into a "supersyn" Earth orbit, where the lander will check its system and eventually use thrusters to enter lunar orbit. The phase from Earth's orbit to the lunar surface is expected to take at least 20 days, while the lunar rover is designed to stay on the moon for 12 days. In the meantime, it will attempt to operate its on-board experiments, deploy two miniature detectors and transmit all the data collected back to Earth.

M1 is considered to be a technical demonstration project with the overall goal of validating the lander design and technology, as well as ispace's business model, and providing customers with reliable lunar transportation and data services.

For M1 Magi ispace, 10 milestones are set between launch and landing, and the goal is to achieve the success criteria set for each milestone. The data and experience accumulated by M1 will be incorporated into future design and operations to enhance mission reliability, which they plan to implement in Mission 2, which begins in 2024.

Subsequently, they will integrate the knowledge of the two tasks into Mission 3 (M3), which is scheduled to be implemented in 2025. Based on the data and experience gained during the previous two missions, M3 will contribute to the commercial lunar payload service program of NASA's Artemis program and provide mature lander design and operation solutions.

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