Resilience, the second lunar lander of Japanese space company “space,” has entered the lunar orbit. Resilience will try to land on the moon about a month later, and if successful, it will be the third private company in the world and the first in Japan.
According to iSpace on the 7th, Resilience successfully entered the lunar orbit at around 5:41 a.m. on the same day. It has been about 113 days since it was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on January 15 on a projectile Falcon 9 of the U.S. space company SpaceX.
It took months to enter the lunar orbit after launch because it flew a “low-energy transition orbit” that went back far instead of entering the moon immediately. The lunar probe designed with this orbit flies close to the Lagrange L1 point, about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, after being separated from the projectile. It uses the gravity of the sun and Earth to turn toward Earth, and then returns at a high speed to enter the lunar orbit while minimizing fuel consumption under the influence of the Earth’s gravity. Several lunar probes, including the Korean lunar probe Danuri, which launched in 2022, flew in this orbit. Resilience also made it into the orbit of the moon by orbiting deep space up to 1.1 million kilometers away from Earth. iSpace is a space startup that brings together researchers from 25 countries, with the Japanese as the center. It has promoted a commercial moon landing project named Hakuto-R since 2018. Hakuto means a white rabbit in Korean. iSpace launched its first lunar lander in 2023 and put it into orbit, but it failed to land. This is because the probe plunged due to a lack of fuel. The second project, Resilience, will try to land on the moon around the 6th of next month. Private companies only succeeded in landing on the moon, such as the Odysseus from Intuitive Machines Corporation in the U.S. in February last year and the Blue Ghost from Firefly Aerospace in March this year. If Resilience succeeds, it will become the third private company in the world. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) landed the small lunar probe Slim on the moon in June last year. When it landed, the Slim’s body turned upside down.
“Compared to the first attempt, everything from launch to entering orbit is going smoothly,” said Takeshi Hakamada, CEO of iSpace. “It’s thanks to my experience from my last failure,” he said. “As moon landing is very difficult, I will prepare carefully and thoroughly.”
SALLY LEE
US ASIA JOURNAL
