Japanese mission takes off to the moon with American rocket and Arab robot

The company SpaceX, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, launches to the Moon, this Wednesday -fair (30), the first private Japanese landing module inside an American rocket. The mission was planned by the Japanese company Ispace and is the first of a program named Hakuto-R. The module would land on the Moon around April 2000, on the visible side of the natural satellite, in the Atlas crater, according to a company statement.

A Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to take off at 3am41 (5h39 in Brasilia) from the base of Cape Canaveral, in the state of Florida, in the southeast of the United States, with an alternative date in case of unforeseen circumstances for Thursday.

If Hakuto manages to land safely in the lunar crater of Atlas, he will release little Rashid. This is the name of the mobile robot developed by the UAE Space Agency, which is the second mission to explore the Solar System, after the Al-Amal (“hope”) orbiter, which has been orbiting Mars since 2021 and studies its atmosphere .