SPACEX'S MISSION TO PLACE A JAPANESE LANDER ON THE MOON

SpaceX postponed by one day a plan to send the first private — and Japanese — lander to the Moon on Wednesday.

A Falcon 9 rocket will now launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 3:37 a.m. (0837 GMT) on Thursday. SpaceX stated on Twitter that the delay was due to additional pre-flight tests.

Until date, only the United States, Russia, and China have succeeded in landing a robot on the moon's surface.

The mission, launched by the Japanese business ispace, is the first in a series named Hakuto-R.

According to a corporate release, the lander will arrive in the Atlas crater on the visible side of the Moon in April 2023.

It is little more than 2 by 2.5 metres and holds a 10-kilogram rover called Rashid, which was constructed by the United Arab Emirates. The oil-rich country is new to the space competition, but recent achievements include a Mars probe in 2020. Rashid will be the Arab world's first Moon mission if it is successful.

"We have accomplished so much in the six short years since we initially began envisioning this initiative in 2016," stated Takeshi Hakamada, CEO of ispace.

Hakuto was one of five finalists in the international Google Lunar XPrize competition, which aimed to put a rover on the Moon by the end of 2018, however there was no winner. However, some of the projects are still under progress.

Another candidate, from the Israeli corporation SpaceIL, crashed into the surface while attempting to land in April 2019, failing to become the first privately-funded mission to accomplish the feat.

ispace states it "aims to extend the domain of human life into space and establish a sustainable planet by delivering high-frequency, low-cost transportation services to the Moon." It has just 200 workers.

NASA's Artemis programme will benefit from future expeditions. The unmanned test trip to the Moon, Artemis-1, is now underway.

In the future years, the US space agency hopes to grow the lunar economy by constructing a space station in orbit around the Moon as well as a base on the surface.

Several businesses have been given contracts to create landers to bring scientific experiments to the surface.

According to rumours, the American firms Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines will launch in 2023 and may get to their objective before ispace by taking a more direct path.