Japanese company aims to put first private lander on Moon, with UAE rover on board – The Peninsula

Japanese company aims to put first private lander on Moon, with UAE rover on board – The Peninsula

Washington: SpaceX is set Wednesday to launch the first private, and Japanese, lander to the Moon.

A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to blast off at 3:39 am (0839 GMT) from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with a backup date on Thursday.

Until now, only the United States, Russia and China have managed to put a robot on the lunar surface.

The mission, by Japanese company ispace, is the first of a program called Hakuto-R.

The lander would touch down around April 2023 on the visible side of the Moon, in the Atlas crater, according to a company statement.

Measuring just over 2 by 2.5 meters, it carries on board a 10-kilogram rover named Rashid, built by the United Arab Emirates. The oil-rich country is a newcomer to the space race but counts recent successes including a Mars probe in 2020. If it succeeds, Rashid will be the Arab world's first Moon mission.

"We have achieved so much in the six short years since we first began conceptualizing this project in 2016," said ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada.

Hakuto was one of five finalists in the international Google Lunar XPrize competition, a challenge to land a rover on the Moon before a 2018 deadline, which ended without a winner. But