SpaceX Rocket Launches Sunday Carrying UAE Lunar Rover, ispace Private Lander Written 12 December 2022
SpaceX launches ispace’s HAKUTO-R Mission 1 and NASA JPL's Lunar Flashlight to a lunar transfer orbit from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, Sunday, December 11 at 2:38 a.m. ET. | Credit: SpaceX; YouTube; framegrab
The AP reports Tokyo-based company ispace “aimed for the moon with its own private lander Sunday, blasting off atop a SpaceX rocket with the United Arab Emirates’ first lunar rover and a toylike robot from Japan that’s designed to roll around up there in the gray dust,” though “it will take nearly five months for the lander and its experiments to reach the moon.” The company “designed its craft to use minimal fuel to save money and leave more room for cargo” and is “taking a slow, low-energy path to the moon, flying 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth before looping back and intersecting with the moon by the end of April,” for what ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada calls “the dawn of the lunar economy.”
Full Story (Associated Press)
Video
SpaceX launches ispace’s HAKUTO-R Mission 1 and NASA JPL's Lunar Flashlight, December 11, 2022, at 2:38 a.m. ET.
(SpaceX; YouTube)