The Hakuto-R lander is currently off way to the moon, but he managed to capture this spectacular vista of the Earth during the encouraging start to this trade mission privately conducted by Japan.
Hakuto-R belongs to the tokiota company ispace, y took his first images this Sunday shortly after from his launchin an attempt to make more bearable the next four months that are left for reach your goal.
The lander was released aboard a SpaceX Falcon rocket on December 11 from Cape Canaveral Station in space force. Approximately 19 hours after separating from its launch vehicle, the spacecraft captured his first images with one of his attached cameras, ad ispace in Twitter.
Although we always associate the crescent shape with our own Moon, what you have up there is actually the Earth seen from cislunar space. A strip of the planet is illuminated by sunlight and what you see on the right of the image is a small piece of the spacecraft.
Hakuto-R captured another amazing Photography with the multi-camera imaging system developed by Canadensys Aerospace Corporationwhere we can see a print most intimate of the Earth dyed with azul.
“We are very satisfied with the performance of the imaging system and with the quality of the first space images. that we have obtained,” he said in a announcement Frank Teti, director general of Canadensys, the company who designed and built the data capture system images. “Design systems that work in the harsh environment of the lunar surface it’s always a challenge, but we feel we’ve done it well. We look forward to sharing equally spectacular images when we land on the Moon.”
Hakuto-R Mission 1 (M1) will attempt to achieve what no other private mission has achieved before: successfully landing on the surface of the Moon. SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries attempted to land their module Beresheet on the Moon in 2019. However, several failedcomputer science and communication problems made Beresheet se crash against the lunar surface.
If ispace becomes the first private company to land on the Moon, could usher in a new era of commercial launches towards the lunar surface. The Hakuto-R M1 lander will attempt to bring its payload to its surfaceamong which we find the rover Rashid (built by United Arab Emirates) and a ball-shaped robot called SORA-Qwhich has been developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the toy company TOMY.
But this is the first test flight for the Japanese company, and it still has a long way to go. It is planned that the module Hakuto-R M1 scope landing the moon in april and make its landing at that time. For nowthe lander remains stable, as it has confirmed ispace on his Twitter account.
We will be following your journey closely and look forward to seeing how land gently over the lunar surface in just a few months.