Liftoff should have occurred two weeks ago, but was delayed by SpaceX for extra rocket checks.Įight minutes after launch, the recycled first-stage booster landed back at Cape Canaveral under a near full moon, the double sonic booms echoing through the night. “This is the dawn of the lunar economy,” Hakamada noted in the SpaceX launch webcast. Now, “it’s the excitement of the business.” NASA’s Apollo moonshots were all “about the excitement of the technology,” said ispace founder and CEO Takeshi Hakamada, who wasn’t alive then. The launch window will open at 6:04 PM ET and lasts. This satellite will provide broadband internet and communications capability for public use facilities in Indonesia’s rural regions. Sunday marked the 50th anniversary of astronauts’ last lunar landing, by Apollo 17’s Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt on Dec. The Satria communications satellite will launch atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for the Indonesian government and PSN, an Indonesian satellite operator. has put astronauts on the lunar surface: 12 men over six landings. and China have achieved so-called “soft landings” on the moon, beginning with the former Soviet Union’s Luna 9 in 1966. Although not launching until early next year, lunar landers built by Pittsburgh’s Astrobotic Technology and Houston’s Intuitive Machines may beat ispace to the moon thanks to shorter cruise times. With Sunday’s predawn launch from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, ispace is now on its way to becoming one of the first private entities to attempt a moon landing. But instead of landing gently, the spacecraft Beresheet slammed into the moon and was destroyed. Its rover, named Rashid after Dubai’s royal family, weighs just 22 pounds (10 kilograms) and will operate on the surface for about 10 days, like everything else on the mission.Īnother finalist, an Israeli nonprofit called SpaceIL, managed to reach the moon in 2019. With a science satellite already around Mars, the UAE wants to explore the moon, too. With its four legs extended, the lander is more than 7 feet (2.3 meters) tall. The ispace lander will aim for Atlas crater in the northeastern section of the moon’s near side, more than 50 miles (87 kilometers) across and just over 1 mile (2 kilometers) deep. The lunar flyby mission ends Sunday with a Pacific splashdown. So it’s taking a slow, low-energy path to the moon, flying 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth before looping back and intersecting with the moon by the end of April.īy contrast, NASA’s Orion crew capsule with test dummies took five days to reach the moon last month. The company ispace designed its craft to use minimal fuel to save money and leave more room for cargo. It will take nearly five months for the lander and its experiments to reach the moon.
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