A Tokyo business launched its private lander to the moon on Sunday, atop a SpaceX rocket with the United Arab Emirates’ first lunar rover and a toylike Japanese robot built to roll about in the grey dust.
The lander and its experiments will take about five months to reach the moon.
To save money and provide more capacity for freight, the firm ispace designing its ship to use as little gasoline as possible. So it’s going 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometres) from Earth before circling back and intersecting with the moon at the end of April.
In comparison, NASA’s Orion crew capsule with test dummies arrived on the moon last month in five days. The lunar flyby mission concluded with a dramatic Pacific splashdown on Sunday.
The ispace lander will aim for Atlas crater, which is more than 50 miles (87 kilometres) broad and slightly over 1 mile (2 kilometres) deep on the moon’s near side. The lender is more than 7 feet (2.3 metres) tall with its four legs outstretched.
