[imagesouce:ispace]

Japanese company ispace will be attempting to land the first robot on the moon today, and you can watch it live on Youtube.

While planet Earth has been busy debating the hidden message beneath King Charles’ coronation menu, a privately owned Japanese company called ispace has been preparing to land the first-ever robot on the moon. The Hakuto-R spacecraft, launched from Earth on December 2022, and after travelling for 135 days, it’s now ready to land on our very own Luna.

Once the Hakuto has landed on the moon, it will deploy a 50kg rover named Rashid, which was developed with the help of its partners in the United Arab Emirates. According to Vice, this would be the first attempt by an Arab nation to explore our natural satellite.

If the mission is successful, it will mark the first time that a private entity has landed an intact spacecraft on the Moon and will make Japan the fourth nation in history to stick a lunar touchdown after the United States, the Soviet Union, and China.

The live stream will feature interviews and footage from the Tokyo-based mission control, and should everything go according to plan, you will be able to watch in real-time as the spacecraft lands on the moon. This is definitely going to be way cooler than anything streaming on Netflix right now.

Founder and CEO of ispace, Takeshi Hakamada is optimistic about the success of the mission, but notes that besides landing a craft on the moon, “what the team has accomplished so far is already a great achievement, and we are already applying lessons learned from this flight to our future missions.”

The moon might have a weaker gravity than Earth, but gently landing something on its surface, as opposed to a ‘controlled crash’ is a much harder feat. Several countries have tried to land their own little piece of tech on the moon, like India’s Vikram which crashed into the Moon in 2019, and Japan’s OMOTENASHI, which suffered a communications breakdown after its November 2022 launch.

China has managed to land its Chang’e series of Moon landers in the past, to the obvious embarrassment of NASA. It would however appear that Japan might just be able to get its own ‘first’ today.

India and Russia have plans to launch robotic missions to the Moon’s surface this year, but the US and its partners have chosen to remain focused on the Artemis program, which aims to land humans on the lunar surface in 2025.

Exciting times!

Space weather allowing, the Hakuto will touch down at 5 o’clock South African time and you can watch the live stream of the ispace lander on their Youtube channel.

To infinity (or the moon), and beyond!

[source:vice]