Japan may soon join a very exclusive club as its privately-led Hakuto-R Mission 1 lunar lander went into orbit around the Moon on March 21 at 10:24 JST after completing a controlled main engine burn in anticipation of a landing attempt in late April.
Conceived and operated by lunar resource development company ispace, Hakuto-R was launched atop a Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket on December 11, 2022. It's a private lunar landing demonstrator that also carries payloads for the Japanese government and international customers, including the Rashid rover of the Emirates Lunar Mission and the JAXA/Tomy SORA-Q transformable lunar robot.
The latest maneuver is the seventh of 10 milestones for the mission and reflects ispace's cautious approach to deep space exploration. With the launch of the probe as the first step and its setting up stable operations on the lunar surface as the 10th, each phase includes careful assessment and evaluation of the results before green-lighting of the next step.
Because of the relatively low power of the Falcon 9 launcher, the Hakuto-R made a slow three-month journey, using a series of orbital maneuvers to give it enough velocity to reach the Moon. During this time, the mission engineers were able to carry out tests on the operational capabilities of the craft that will inform later long-range missions. The main engine and attitude thrusters then came into play for several minutes for orbital insertion under the supervision of Mission Control in Nihonbashi, Tokyo.
If the last milestones come off as planned, a decision will be made regarding the date for landing on the Moon in the coming weeks.
Source: ispace
