SpaceX sends a Japanese lander and a NASA cubesat to the Moon.
A privately-developed Japanese Moon lander and a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory cubesat are on their way to the moon. After five back-to-back delays that pushed the launch from November to mid-December, Falcon 9 lifted off with Japanese startup ispace's first HAKUTO-R Moon lander on December 11th, kicking off a multi-month journey that will take the spacecraft more than It is 1M km away from Earth.
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The #Falcon9 sends the Hakuto-R mission to the Moon! Following stage separation the first stage performed a boost back burn and returned to land at LZ-2!
— Richard Angle (@RDAnglePhoto) December 11, 2022
📸 for @Teslarati pic.twitter.com/x6RAbKfsQ9
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It isn't the first time that the company has launched a mostly commercial Moon lander. In February of this year, SpaceIL's Beresheet Moon lander was launched into the sky by the Falcon 9 rocket. The attempt by Beresheet was a historic step for commercial spaceflight. Three years later, another private Moon lander has been launched. The main purpose of HAKUTO-R was to allow the rocket to launch it directly into deep space. A JPL cubesat that missed out on a ride on NASA's first Space Launch System rocket joined the Moon lander as a Falcon 9 rideshare payload. At the end of the low-energy ballistic transfer trajectory, both spacecraft will have limited opportunities to enter lunar orbit and continue their missions.
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It will take several successful orbital correction maneuvers and enough longevity to survive months in deep space, which is protected by Earth's magnetic fields. If they make it that far, HAKUTO-R will conduct several more burns to reach LLO, where ispace will verify the spacecraft's health and eventually attempt a soft landing on the Moon. The prestige of a privately-developed spaceship is about as high as it can get because it has never landed on an extraterrestrial body. There is a point between the Earth and the Moon known as the Lagrange point. It will spend most of its time away from the Moon but occasionally fly within 15 kilometers of the surface. JPL's nominal mission plan calls for Lunar Flashlight to complete at least ten week-long orbits and use an instrument to search for water ice in permanently shadowed Moon craters during each close approach.
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🔦 We've just acquired signal from Lunar Flashlight, which means the @NASA tech demo is communicating and operating as expected following its launch on a @SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket!
— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) December 11, 2022
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Without context, both missions seem to complement each other well, and it's not hard to imagine an alternative scenario where a cubesat like Lunar Flashlight was included to prospect for ice that a lander could then target. The JPL cubesat's presence on ispace's HAKUTO-R was accidental. Because of certain design decisions made by NASA, the giant rocket is intended to launch cubesats to the Moon, but those satellites are barely accessible for the entire time the rocket is configured for its unprecedentedly slow launch campaigns. Even though SLS lifted off for the first time in November 2022, its cubesat payloads had to be ready for launch and installed on the rocket in October 2021.
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Four of 14 planned payloads weren't ready in time, forcing them to find other ways to deep space That may have been an unexpected blessing, as the ten payloads that did make the deadline ended up sitting inside SLS for 13 months, much of which was spent at the launch pad. Half of the satellites seem to have failed after launch. JPL was able to find a new ride to the Moon less than a month after SLS and its co-passengers because of the extremely circuitous path the NASA rocket took to reach launch readiness. Unlike those copassengers, Lunar Flashlight only spent a few weeks on Falcon 9. The SLS launch trajectory took it directly to the Moon, giving it just a few days to fix any problems. JPL should still be able to enter a nominal orbit even if Lunar Flashlight requires weeks of in-space repair, because of the slower, more efficient transfer orbit that SpaceX used to launch HAKUTO-R.
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A first-of-its-kind chemical propulsion system designed to deliver up to a ton of performance for a small satellite is included in the Lunar Flashlight. The weight of Haka-R is closer to 1. A necessity to land softly on the Moon is thought to be a result of 1 tons. The performance requirements of the landers have been reduced by ispace, but they still need 2000- 2500 m/s of delta-V to land on the lunar surface. On December 12th, it was confirmed that HAKUTO-R is in excellent shape. The landers has secured stable communications, a stable orientation in space, and positive power generation from its solar array, according to ispace.
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If everything goes according to plan, the spacecraft will enter lunar orbit around mid-April. With HAKUTO-R in a stable state, the next most important near-term milestone will be the successful use of its propulsion and navigation systems. Within a month of launch, the startup hopes to demonstrate smooth deep space operations. HAKUTO-R was the 56th successful launch of the year and the company's second direct Moon launch this year.
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