Hakuto-R Mission 1

Hakuto-R was a private Japanese lunar landing mission built and operated by the Japanese space company ispace. This first Hakuto lunar mission was primarily a technology demonstrator and carried the Emirates Lunar Mission which was a small lunar rover named Rashid. This small lunar rover had a mass of 10 kg and was designed to study properties of lunar soil, the geology of the Moon, dust movement, and the surface plasma environment. The Hakuto-R lunar lander was measured at 2.3 metres (7.5 ft) tall by 2.6 metres (8.5 ft) wide, with a total weight of approximately 1,000 kilograms (2,200 lb). To perform a stable landing, the lander was equipped with four landing legs and a main thruster. Using data collected from a previous lunar scanning mission, ispace determined that the mission would attempt a landing in the Atlas crater in the Mare Frigoris region of the Moon. In an effort to conserve fuel, the mission used a slower path to approach the Moon, entering lunar orbit in March 2023.

This Japanese private lunar lander was launched on 11 December 2022 aboard a Falcon 9 rocket of SpaceX. The lunar lander separated from the rocket 47 minutes later at a distance around 970 kilometres away from Earth. After a five-month travel time, the Japanese lunar lander traveled 1,400,000 kilometres, further than any privately-funded spacecraft, to attempt a lunar landing on 25 April 2023. Communication with the lander was lost during the final moments of descent to the lunar surface at 16:40 UTC on 25 April. Analysis determined that the lander plummeted uncontrollably when the propellant was exhausted. This happened because the onboard computer wrongly assumed the radar altimeter was faulty, and ignoring its data, misjudged the actual altitude of the spacecraft and kept hovering 5km above the surface of the Moon. The crash site was later identified by the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter team.

Hakuto-R Mission 1 launch overview

Date launch	Rocket	Launch base	Orbit	Payload	Patch	Mission succes?
December 11, 2022	Falcon 9	Cape Canaveral (USA)	Trans-Lunar Injection	Hakuto-R Mission 1		Success

Images: ispace