Tech Japanese lunar lander HAKUTO-R Mission 1

The craft developed by Tokyo-based ispace Inc. lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The craft will head to the moon in a trip spanning four and a half months. The Hakuto-R space mission calls for the lander to journey approximately 1.5 million kilometers over the course of a month or so before heading to the moon to touch down in a region called Mare Frigoris, or Sea of Cold. The craft is carrying a lunar surface exploration robot jointly developed primarily by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and toymaker Tomy Co., a lunar rover from the United Arab Emirates and five other payloads.

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The lander launched on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 2:38 a.m. Eastern Time. About 19 hours after separating from its launch vehicle, the Hakuto-R spacecraft captured its first images using its mounted camera. More than a hundred people at a viewing party in Tokyo roared in applause when the rocket fired and lifted into the dark skies. "I'm so happy. After repeated delays, it's good that we had a proper launch today," Yuriko Takeda, a 28-year-old worker at an electronics company who joined the gathering, tells Reuters. "I have this image of the American flag from the Apollo landing, so while this is just the launch, the fact that it's a private company going there with a rover is a significant step."

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The M1 lander appeared set to touch down after coming as close as 295 feet (89 m) from the lunar surface, a live animation showed. The lander was just over 2m tall and weighed 340kg, relatively small and compact by lunar spacecraft standards. It had been due for an hour-long landing manoeuvre from its orbit, around 100km above the surface, where it was moving at nearly 6,000km/hour. After reaching the landing site in the Moon's northern hemisphere, the Hakuto-R was to deploy two payloads to analyse the lunar soil, its geology and atmosphere. One of them was made by the toy company TOMY, which created the Transformers. The United States, Russia and China are the only countries to have managed to put a robot on the lunar surface, all through government-sponsored programmes.

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Despite the failure, the company, founded by Hakamada in 2010, will continue with its future moon landing projects. In 2024, ispace plans to launch another lunar craft that will transport a new moon rover that the company is developing. It will also carry a water electrolyzer for use on the moon's surface and a food production module both developed by private companies. In another launch in 2025, the company's lunar lander will transport goods for the Artemis program, a project led by the United States for human exploration of the moon and Mars. Items transported by ispace for the 2025 mission will include a seismograph of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and an underground temperature measurement device.

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The company also plans to build a lunar town with a population of 1,000 and 10,000 annual visitors by 2040. In addition, it aims to search for water on the moon and establish a business for transporting goods to Earth's satellite.

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