Cape Canaveral: The first lunar rover from the United Arab Emirates and a toy-like Japanese robot are intended to roll into the gray dust on a SpaceX rocket by a Tokyo company on Sunday.
The journey of the lander to the Moon and the associated experiments will take about five months.
For financial reasons and to provide more space for cargo, the company iSpace designed its craft to use less fuel. As a result, it will travel about 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth before rotating around and hitting the Moon by late April.
Also Read: NASA Orion capsule returns from the moon safely and passes an aces test
In contrast, it took five days for NASA's Orion crew capsule and test dummy to reach the Moon last month. The thrilling Pacific splashdown on Sunday marked the end of the lunar flyby mission.
Atlas Crater, measuring more than 50 miles (87 kilometers) across and just over a mile (2 kilometers) deep, is located in the near-northeastern region of the Moon and will be the target of the iSpace lander. The lander is more than 7 feet (2.3 m) tall when all four of its legs are extended.
The UAE wants to explore the Moon in addition to Mars, where a science satellite is already in orbit. Like everything else on the mission, its rover, named Rasheed after Dubai's royal family, weighs only 22 pounds (10 kg) and will operate on the surface for about 10 days.
According to Emirates project manager Hamad Almarzouqi, landing on an uncharted region of the Moon would produce "novel and highly valuable" scientific data. The lunar surface is also "an ideal platform" to test new technology that could be applied to future manned missions to Mars.
In addition, there is a sense of pride in one's country as the rover "represents a pioneering national effort and a historic moment in the space sector, which, if successful, will be the first Emirati and Arab mission to land on the surface of the Moon." he said in a statement after the launch.
Also Read: Gmail is unavailable for millions of users worldwide
Additionally, a Japanese space agency orange-shaped sphere that will turn into a wheeled robot on the Moon is aboard the lander. A solid state battery from a Japanese spark plug company, a flight computer with artificial intelligence from an Ottawa, Ontario, company and 360-degree cameras from a Toronto-area company are also on the flight.
A small NASA laser experiment that was carried by a rocket is now traveling independently to the Moon to search for ice in the permanently shadowed craters of the Moon's south pole.
Hakuto, which is Japanese for white rabbit, is the name of the space mission. In Asian folklore, a white rabbit is rumored to live on the moon. The private company intends to conduct a second lunar landing in 2024 and a third in 2025.
Ispace, which was founded in 2010, placed among the top three in the Google Lunar XPRIZE competition, which called for a successful Moon landing by 2018. Ispace's lunar rover was never launched.
2019 saw a moon landing by a different finalist, an Israeli non-profit organization called SpaceIL. However, the Beresheet spacecraft crashed into the Moon and was discarded instead of making a soft landing.
Espace is now on track to become one of the first private entities to attempt a moon landing, launching Sunday morning from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Lunar landers developed by Astrobiotic Technology of Pittsburgh and Intuitive Machines of Houston could reach the Moon before iSpace due to shorter cruise times, despite not launching until early next year.
Starting with the former Soviet Union's Luna 9 mission in 1966, only Russia, the United States, and China have accomplished so-called "soft landings" on the Moon. Additionally, only the United States has sent astronauts to the Moon, with a total of 12 men in six landings.
Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt made their final lunar landing on December 11, 1972, which is celebrated on Sunday.
According to iSpace founder and CEO Takeshi Hakamada, who was not around at the time, the excitement of the technology was at the heart of NASA's Apollo moon missions. "It's the thrill of business now,"
Also Read: After a disaster Twitter has relaunched its subscriber service
Hakamada said during the SpaceX launch webcast that "this is the dawn of the lunar economy." We should see the moon.
Liftoff was scheduled to happen two weeks earlier, but SpaceX called it off to perform additional rocket inspections.
The recycled first-stage booster splashed down at Cape Canaveral eight minutes after liftoff, with double sonic booms echoing throughout the night.