based in Tokyo ispace said on Monday that its Hakuto-R lunar lander is on track to reach the moon by the end of April.
Ispace launched the lander aboard a Falcon 9 in December; Since then, the spacecraft has traveled about 1.376 million kilometers, the farthest a commercially operated and privately funded spacecraft has ever traveled into deep space. The company anticipates completing all deep space orbital maneuvers by mid-March, followed by lunar orbit insertion in late March.
Ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said during a press conference on Monday that the flight has provided operational data that will inform subsequent missions. “We have gained tons of data and knowledge” about the lander and its subsystems, he said. “They are very viable assets for ispace.”
That includes information about the structural performance of the lander during launch and deployment, as well as the performance of the thermal, communication, and power subsystems.
“It’s almost impossible to assume everything perfectly before the mission,” Hakamada said. “It is inevitable to face events outside of the nominal.” Some out-of-the-box events on the mission so far include higher thermal temperatures than the company anticipated and brief, unexpected issues with communications after the lander deployed from Falcon 9. Thermal issues have not affected the operations.
The company has two more missions planned, aptly named Mission 2 and Mission 3, scheduled for 2024 and 2025, respectively. Mission 2 will be the next technical demonstration of the Hakuto-R landing system, and also a test of an ispace “micro rover” that will collect data on the lunar surface. Ispace’s ultimate goal is to boost the lunar economy, largely through resource exploration and extraction; both the lander and rover will be important sources of information gathering as the company plans future missions.
The company will also send commercial payloads to the lunar surface for Mission 2, from companies including Takasago Thermal Engineering Co., Euglena Co., and National Central Taiwan University’s Department of Space Science and Engineering.
Ispace has different plans for Mission 3. That mission is being developed in conjunction with aerospace contractor Draper, General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems, and Systima Technologies, a division of Karman Space and Defense. Ispace acts as design agent and subcontractor for that mission. The companies won a $73 million contract from NASA as part of the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program to send scientific payloads to the Moon. Ispace also plans to ship commercial payload clients along with the scientific payloads. Companies currently negotiating final payload service agreements are AstronetX, ArkEdge Space, Aviv Labs, and CesiumAstro.
