Japanese space exploration company ispace is all set to launch its second lunar lander early Wednesday morning (Jan. 15), but what will the spacecraft carry with it to the moon?
The ispace Resilience lander will lift off atop of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida Wednesday at 1:11 a.m. EST (0611 GMT), with Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander also on the flight. The dual moon mission is the first of an array of lunar launches planned for 2025.
Resilience is based on ispace's Hakuto-R solar-powered lander platform, an octagonal prism that's 7.5 feet (2.3 meters) tall and 8.5 feet (2.6 m) wide and features four landing legs.
Resilience is packed with five science payloads. These come mainly from commercial and academic partners, while one is a micro moon rover developed by ispace's Luxembourg-based subsidiary that will drive the mission's initial resource exploration activities.
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- Tenacious rover: The ispace rover, named Tenacious, is armed with a high-definition, forward-mounted camera and a small shovel for collecting samples for imaging by the camera. The compact vehicle measures 10.24 inches (26 centimeters) tall, 12.40 inches (31.5 cm) wide and 21.26 inches (54 cm) long and weighs about 11 pounds (5 kilograms). Tenacious, constructed with a carbon fiber-reinforced plastic frame to withstand the rigors of space travel, will also carry "Moonhouse," a small red house framed in white from Swedish artist Mikael Genberg.
- Water Electrolyzer Experiment: The instrument, provided by Takasago Thermal Engineering Co., which supplies air conditioning equipment, aims to demonstrate the feasibility of producing oxygen and hydrogen from lunar water resources. This process is seen as a critical step for sustainable lunar exploration.
- Algae-based food production module: A self-contained module designed to test the cultivation of algae as a potential food source in the lunar environment, developed by Euglena Co. Algae production could potentially contribute to future life support systems for lunar and deep space exploration.
- Deep Space Radiation Probe (DSRP): This 14-ounce (399 grams) instrument will monitor radiation levels during the Earth-moon transit, in lunar orbit and on the lunar surface, aiming to characterize the ionizing radiation environment between Earth and the moon. Collected data will provide insights for the safety of future human missions. DSRP was developed by the Department of Space Science and Engineering at National Central University in Taiwan.
- Commemorative plate: Finally, the lander carries a commemorative alloy plate developed by Bandai Namco Research Institute, Inc., and based on the "Charter of the Universal Century," a fictional document from the popular Japanese science fiction franchise Gundam.
Resilience itself will also take onboard lessons from ispace's first lunar landing attempt, which crashed into the moon in April 2023, due to an onboard altitude sensor being confused by the rim of a crater
The company is also building a larger lander, named Apex 1.0. Its first outing will be ispace's Mission 3, expected to launch around 2026.
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