Japan’s ispace attempts world’s first commercial moon landing

A Japanese lunar lander, carrying a rover developed in the United Arab Emirates, will attempt to find its footing on the moon’s surface Tuesday — potentially marking the world’s first lunar landing for a commercially developed spacecraft.

The lander launched atop a SpaceX rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida on December 11. Since then, it’s taken a three-month trek to enter orbit around the moon, which lies about 239,000 miles (383,000 kilometers) from Earth, using a low-energy trajectory.

The lunar lander, called Hakuto-R, is carrying the Rashid rover, which was built by Dubai’s Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC), in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — the first Arab-built lunar spacecraft.

In history, only three countries have ever executed a controlled landing on the moon — the United States, the former Soviet Union and China. The US remains the only country to have put humans on the moon.

Japanese company ispace, which built the Hakuto-R lander, has a different approach to prior lunar missions, aiming to land its spacecraft on the moon as a for-profit business rather than under the banner of a single country.

The company has shared mission updates on its Twitter account, including a recent photograph of the Earth peeking out from behind the moon that was captured by the spacecraft as it traveled through lunar orbit.