SpaceX sent a Japanese lander to the moon

On Sunday, December 11, the American SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle sent the Hakuto-R lander, owned by the private Tokyo company ispace, to the moon. On board are the UAE lunar rover and a spherical mini-robot of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

Hakuto-R is designed to save fuel and free up space for the payload, so it will fly to the moon for five months. In April, it will land in the Atlas crater, located in the northeast of the visible side of our satellite. Upon arrival, the module will release its four legs and deploy the delivered vehicles: a ten-kilogram UAE Rashid lunar rover and a mini-robot JAXA the size of an orange.

The international experiment was named Mission 1. In 2024 and 2025, Ispace plans to carry out the following lunar missions.

"We are striving to expand the human presence in outer space. We believe that by 2040 the population on the Moon will reach one thousand people, and ten thousand will visit it annually," the ispace website says.

During Sunday's launch, the Falcon 9 rocket also sent a NASA Lunar Flashlight laser device to the south pole of the Moon, which will explore ice in shaded polar craters.