space, based in Tokyo, announced that its Hakuto-R lunar lander is on track to reach the Moon at the end of April.
Ispace launched the lander aboard a Falcon 9 in December; since then, the spacecraft has traveled some 1.376 million kilometers, the farthest ever achieved by a privately funded commercial spacecraft. The company expects to complete all orbital maneuvers in deep space by mid-March, and at the end of the same month it will be inserted into lunar orbit.
Ispace Director General Takeshi Hakamada told a press conference that the flight has provided operational data that will serve as the basis for subsequent missions. "We have acquired tons of data and technical 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 is perfect before the mission," Hakamada said. "It is inevitable to face events out of the ordinary." Some of the mission abnormalities so far include higher-than-company thermal temperatures and a brief unexpected communication issue after the lander deployed from Falcon 9. Thermal issues have not affected the operations. Thermal issues have not affected operations.
The company has two more missions planned, called 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 "microrover" that will collect data on the lunar surface. Ispace's ultimate goal is to boost the lunar economy, primarily through resource exploration and extraction; both the lander and the rover will be important sources of information when planning future missions.
The company will also send commercial payloads to the lunar surface for Mission 2, coming from companies including Takasago Thermal Engineering Co., Euglena Co., and the Department of Space Science and Engineering at National Central Taiwan University.
Ispace has different plans for Mission 3. That mission is being developed together 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 deliver scientific payloads to the Moon. Ispace also plans to ship commercial payload clients alongside the scientific payloads. Companies currently negotiating definitive payload service agreements include AstronetX, ArkEdge Space, Aviv Labs, and CesiumAstro.
