Ispace plans to deploy its “micro rover” on its second Moon landing attempt.
Ispace of Tokyo plans to make a second attempt to land an uncrewed spacecraft on the Moon as soon as the fourth quarter of 2024, after its inaugural mission in April ended in a crash on the lunar surface.
“Mission 2” is to carry a variety of payloads, including a redesigned “micro rover,” and would launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, Takeshi Hakamada, ispace founder and CEO, said on Nov. 16.
Ispace’s first lunar lander failed to softly touch down on the Moon in April when an altitude measurement software error caused the spacecraft to crash into the lunar surface.
The Mission 2 spacecraft will use the same Series 1 lander model design as Mission 1. To fix problems the vehicle encountered on its first mission, ispace plans new software validation steps, expansion of the landing simulation range and additional field testing of landing sensors to improve accuracy. The lander will be named “Resilience.”
Ispace’s micro rover will be stored in the payload bay at the top of the Series I lunar lander. The rover is being designed, manufactured and assembled by engineers in the company’s office in Luxembourg. The four-wheeled rover is 26 cm tall, 31.5 cm wide and 54 cm long. Weighing about 5 kg, the vehicle is made of carbon fiber-reinforced plastics. The rover will carry a forward-mounted high-definition camera to take pictures of the Moon’s surface. The Series I lander will relay commands and data back to Earth for the rover.
Ispace has an agreement to sell lunar regolith to NASA that it plans to execute on its Mission 2. To transfer the Moon dirt to the space agency, a shovel, developed by Epiroc AB, a Swedish manufacturer of mining equipment, will be mounted on the front of the micro rover to dig up lunar soil. The rover’s camera will take a picture of it as part of the transfer of ownership to NASA.
The Luxembourg Space Agency, via a European Space Agency contract, is helping to pay for the rover’s development. Ispace anticipates loading the rover into its lander in Japan in the summer of 2024.
In addition to the micro rover, ispace’s Mission 2 lander will carry four other payloads: water electrolyzer equipment made by Takasago Thermal Engineering Co.; a module for food production experiments from Euglena Co.; a deep space radiation probe developed by the Department of Space Science and Engineering at the National Central University in Taiwan; and a commemorative alloy plate modeled after the “Charter of the Universal Century,” a reference to a fictional political declaration about the rights of space colonies in the “Gundam” anime TV series.
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