SpaceX was back at the launch pad to send a couple of moonbound customers into space from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
A Falcon 9 lifted off at 2:38 a.m. Sunday from Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40 carrying private Japanese company ispace’s HAKUTO-R Mission 1 lunar lander, the first of a planned series of landers that, if successful, will make it the first commercial soft landing ever on the moon.
The launch was the 56th for SpaceX among its three launch sites at Cape Canaveral, Kennedy Space Center and Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Among its customers hitching a ride are a small rover for the United Arab Emirates and a two-wheeled robot for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Upon landing, assuming other more direct flights don’t make it to the moon first, it would become the first commercial company and the first Japanese spacecraft to land on the moon.
The HAKUTO-R Mission 1 lander looks to avoid a similar fate, and ispace has two more lunar landing missions already in the works. The U.S. is the only country to send humans to the moon with 12 men walking on its surface during the Apollo missions between 1969-1972. The U.S. is looking to return humans to the moon as part of the Artemis program.
Central to the Artemis program is NASA’s hunt for lunar ice on the south pole, which is where Artemis III looks to land. Lunar ice could potentially be converted into both oxygen for breathing and hydrogen for rocket fuel, which could support both a sustained lunar presence and exploration to Mars and beyond.
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