Japan, US firms launch landers in unusual double moonshot

ORLANDO – Two moon landers – one from Japan’s ispace and another from US space firm Firefly – lifted off on Jan 15 on a SpaceX rocket in Florida in an unusual double moonshot launch, underscoring a global rush to peruse the lunar surface.

Japanese space exploration company ispace launched its Hakuto-R Mission 2, making its second attempt to land on the moon after an initial mission in April 2023

failed in its final moments

because of an altitude miscalculation.

Texas-based Firefly Aerospace rolled out its first moon lander, Blue Ghost, which would make it the third company to launch a moon lander under Nasa’s public-private Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) programme.

“The ‘rideshare’ launch with Firefly is a symbol of growing commercial missions” to the moon, ispace chief executive Takeshi Hakamada said at a public viewing event in Tokyo.

Intuitive Machines’

moon landing in 2024

, albeit lopsided and partially unsuccessful, marked the first private company and the first CLPS mission to land on the moon. An earlier attempt by CLPS member Astrobotic’s lander failed shortly after launch.

Countries and private companies worldwide have been focused on the moon in recent years for its potential to host astronaut bases and hold resources that could be mined for in-space applications. This turns Earth’s natural satellite into a stage for national prestige and geopolitical competition akin to the Cold War-era space race.

The Hakuto lander, named Resilience, is carrying US$16 million (S$22 million) worth of customer missions and six payloads, including an in-house “Micro Rover”. The latter will deploy from the lander and collect lunar samples, said ispace executive business director Jumpei Nozaki.

Hakuto’s touchdown on the moon is expected four to five months after launch. It will take an energy-efficient path relying heavily on the Earth and moon’s gravity in a winding series of flybys to steer its trajectory.

Firefly’s Blue Ghost will aim to reach the moon 45 days after launch, around March 2. That lander is carrying 10 payloads from a variety of Nasa-funded customers and one from Blue Origin-owned Honeybee Robotics.

Both landers’ missions will last a full lunar day, or roughly two weeks. They will not survive the frigid lunar nighttime, where temperatures can plunge to roughly minus -128 deg C.

Nasa, with its Artemis programme, aims to return humans to the moon by 2027 – but likely later – for the first time since 1972. China plans to put its own crews on the lunar surface by 2030 following a series of robotic missions.

CLPS missions like Blue Ghost, privately owned but substantially funded by Nasa, are meant to study the moon’s surface and stimulate private lunar demand before Nasa sends humans there using SpaceX’s Starship and later Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander.

But the US space agency faces potential changes to its Artemis programme with the incoming administration of Donald Trump. As President-elect, he has largely sided with SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk’s vision to focus heavily on Mars.

“We’ve invested in going to the moon, and I think everybody wants us to go back to the moon,” Dr Nicky Fox, head of Nasa’s science mission directorate who oversees CLPS, told Reuters on Jan 14.

“The great thing about Nasa science – we do amazing science wherever we go,” she said. REUTERS