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Almost five months ago a SpaceX rocket was launched from Florida with two moonlanders. The Blue Ghost spacecraft, from the Texas-based Firefly Aerospace, zoomed in on the moon and in March it became the first robot-like commercial vehicle that landed upright on the moon’s surface.
The other spacecraft, developed by the Japan -based company ISPACE, is now just coming to its destination.
Resilience, as the loose written Moonlander is called, is on schedule to make his touchdown attempt at 3:24 pm et on Thursday -three months after the Rideshare -Buddy has made history.
ISPACE is not too worried about losing a ‘first’ superlative trade. And managers said that taking a slow and stable road to the Moon ISPACE can offer some long -term benefits.
“What is good about this process of four or five months is that small things happen every day … Something we did not expect,” ISPACE Chief Financial Officer Jumpei Nozaki told CNN in January. “This (journey to the moon) is really a learning phase.”
Three teams of ISPACE employees rotate in and out of the mission control room of the company in Tokyo, and achieved the practice of months in the supervision of the unpredictable and daring physics of the deep space travel-a rare opportunity, told the founder and CEO of the company, Takeshi Hakamada, to CNN.
Such a gradual approach to the moon does not guarantee the success of the landing.
The first attempt by ISPACE to place a spacecraft on the lunar surface ended with a crash landing in April 2023 after a trip of 4 ½ months from the earth.
Ultimately, the long route from Resilience ispace offers both advantages and disadvantages.
The ISPACE – Stuck Rover (TOP) is seen by the Resilience Lunar Lander in the Tsukuba Space Center of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency in September 2024. – Toru Hanai/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Go to the moon in months, weeks or days
Resilience is on the way to the moon that is often referred to as a transfer with low energy. It is essentially a slow, cruise route – just like traveling to a friend’s house on a bike and crawls out on the descents, with little fuel or energy.
On such a path, the resilience lander travels hundreds of thousands of kilometers, stands in deep space and waiting for the moon’s gravity to catch the spacecraft in a natural way in Maanbaan.
Other vehicles such as the Blue Ghost from Firefly Aerospace and the NOVA-C Lander, developed by Intuitive Machines in Texas,, on the other hand, have used large engines to shoot themselves on a much more direct path. For example, the newest Nova-C Lander from intuitive machines reached the moon about a week after taking off.
Compared to Moonlanders developed by the competitors of ISPACE, resilience is lightweight and relatively cheap with a smaller rocket motor.
The resilience that is spent in a job all the time allows mission operators to ‘verify many types of systems during this long journey’, such as the sensors, navigation and other software systems of the vehicle, Nozaki said.
But there are also disadvantages.
And Nozaki said that, regardless of the outcome of the journey of the resilience, ISPACE will leave the low energy transfer approach with his third mission.
The upcoming Moonlander of ISPACE, called Apex 1.0, will be flown in collaboration with the Massachusetts-based company Draper, under CLPs for the Artemis program, with the aim of taking a more direct route to the Moon.
Reaching the moon quickly is also ‘really important for our customers’, said Nozaki.
These customers include research groups, companies and governments that pay ISPACE to fly freight, such as science instruments on board the Lunar Lander.
Months in transport can put extra wear on instruments because they are exposed to the intense radiation environment and wild temperature fluctuations of the space before they start working on the moon surface according to ISPACE.
What is the next step for the resilience lander from ISPACE
Nevertheless, the company is hopeful that a group of three science instruments that are currently on board that resilience will perform exciting tests after the vehicle reached the moon on Thursday.
Resilience is wearing a module that is designed to test algae-based food production, a deep-room radiation monitor and a water electrolyzer experiment, a device that is aimed at generating hydrogen and oxygen in the moon environment.
The first Lunar Lander from ISPACE descended to the Atlas Crater, a characteristic on the northeast side of the near face, when it crashed in April 2023. This Go-Around wants to land the company in another Lunar location: a 750-mile long (1,200 kilometer) normal frigoris or the “sea of cold” far northern countries in the moon in the moon in the moon in the moon in the moon.
Mare Frigoris is considerably flatter than the Atlas Crater region and may be more easily navigating terrain. ISPACE said in a statement that the new landing site was chosen because it offers ‘flexibility’.
The company is planning to attempt on YouTube and X’s touchdown attempt on YouTube and X.
If resilience lands upright, ISPACE becomes the first commercial company outside the US that achieves such a performance. ISPACE would also become a member of Firefly, whose Blue Ghost Lander made a pristine landing in March, by becoming the only two companies that completed a completely successful touchdown of a robot -like lunar lander.
Intuitive machines have landed two vehicles on the moon, both near the moon’s moon. Each of those spacecraft landed on its side, but limited science and research that the company could carry out.
Both Firefly Aerospace and Intuitive Machines are contractors for NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, Initiative, which is part of the Artemis program of the Space Agency – a framework where NASA is planning to bring people to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years. Robot missions that are performed among CLPs are intended to serve as scientific pathfinders, so that the road is cleared for the return of astronauts.
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