Japanese try to make first private landing on the Moon on Tuesday (25) – 04/23/2023 – Sidereal Messenger
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Last Thursday (20), the largest rocket ever designed in the world, SpaceX’s Starship, a product of the private initiative, made its first test flight (only partially successful, it’s true). Next Tuesday (25th), we may very well have the first successful private landing. If that’s not a sign of the times, I don’t know what is.
The company ispace, if all goes well, will have a landing module seated on the surface of the Moon on April 25th, around 1:40 pm Brasília time. It will be the first time that a company has successfully descended to the lunar surface – an emblem of the future.
If we count only private initiatives, it will be the second attempt. The first, with the Israeli module Beresheet, in 2019, ended in failure. The Japanese at ispace could be the first to succeed, making Japan the fourth nation to send a soft landing probe to the Moon, after Russia, the US and China.
More than that, the initial mission of the Hakuto-R probe, a landing module 2.3 meters high and one thousand kilograms (fully stocked), marks the beginning of a new era in lunar exploration, in which space agencies hire companies to bring their payloads to the surface. It is something that has never been seen before.
On board the Hakuto-R, a small rover from the United Arab Emirates, called Rashid, weighing ten kilos, as well as a small Japanese vehicle in the shape of a sphere, with a modest mass of 250 grams. They will land, if all goes well, somewhere in the Atlas crater, on the shore of Mare Frigoris. ispace has already successfully completed eight of the ten stages planned for the flight.
The mission was launched with a Falcon 9 rocket, from the American company SpaceX, on December 11, 2022. Since then, it has survived the launch, operations on a flight that took it more than 1 million km from Earth, operating in space. deep for a month, until captured by the Moon, about 384,000 km away, on March 21, entering its orbit and maneuvering to adjust its trajectory as it revolves around the Moon (establishing a circular path on April 13 ).
Objectives 9 and 10 of Hakuto-R’s mission 1 are, respectively, landing and remaining operational after landing, delivering its payloads to the surface. That’s basically what we can witness from Tuesday. In case there is any problem, the company has reservation dates for the landing: April 26, May 1 and 3.
The whole premise is to demonstrate the ability to take payloads to the lunar surface at an affordable cost, and the American subsidiary of ispace already has a contract with NASA to carry out missions on behalf of the US space agency. If it doesn’t work, the feat is still relevant, for all the steps successfully completed. Either way, it will be exciting to watch what could be the beginning of a new era for lunar exploration.
This column is published on Mondays in the printed version, in Folha Corrida.
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