ispace (HAKUTO-R) Mission 2, 2024 Options

[Phil Stooke]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5Xf7POM3qQ

This link is for a press conference on ispace's HAKUTO-R Mission 2 - starting at 8 p m Eastern time, 5 pm Pacific time for North America.

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

Just a few notes. Mission 2 will fly in the 4th quarter of 2024 (no earlier than...). The lander will be named Resilience (M1 lander didn't get a name). It will carry an ispace-designed rover which will scoop up a bit of regolith, and NASA will buy it for a nominal amount to demonstrate transfer of ownership of lunar material, a legal precedent for future commercial activity. There are several other payloads testing technology and performing a small biological experiment. No landing site was identified but the lander has solar cells on its vertical sides and the rover has a vertical solar panel, the whole setup resembling Chandrayaan 3. That suggests a near-polar site. In fact there have been ispace studies about a site NW of Amundsen and just south of Svedberg at 82.04° S, 66.36° E:


Calzada Diaz, A., D. Bolan, D. and Puntar, M., 2020. Mission planning for a lunar polar mission: ispace's Polar Ice Explorer. Presented at the 51st Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. Abstract no. 2175.

Gscheidle, C., Biswas, J., Ivanov, D., Fernandes, D., Calzada-Diaz, A., Lamamy, J.A., Tattusch, T. and Bergemann, C., 2022. Challenges of operating a drilling instrument on a small rover at the lunar poles - LVS-PIE phase A study results. Planetary and Space Science, p.105426. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pss.2022.105426


Those studies are for a more capable future system, not this specific mission, but they show that a near-polar site has been discussed.

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

https://ispace-inc.com/news-en/?p=6120

This press release from ispace gives more details of the mission including payloads and a new landing site. It's in Mare Frigoris, not at the southern site mentioned above. Launch no earlier than December 2024. It will be about the same time as Firefly's mission to Mare Crisium and Intuitive Machines' second mission, this time to very close to the south pole.

Phil