Launching the Moon with M1 and ispace: a robotic lander to explore lunar landscapes and geology in the Atlas crater
A boxy, 7.5-foot-tall spacecraft is making its final approach to the moon, where it will make history—if it touches down safely. It’s poised to be the first commercial lander to set its robotic feet there, with competitors sure to follow.
M1 was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and entered lunar orbit on March 21st. The rovers on board will study lunar soil and geology in a previously unexplored location.
“This is a new way of doing science on the Moon, a new way of doing business on the Moon as well,” says Abigail Calzada Diaz, a geologist and lunar-exploration specialist at the European Space Resources Innovation Centre in Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg.
The Atlas crater is the outer edge of the Moon’s Mare Frigoris. “This is a region that no previous lunar missions have explored,” says Hamid Al-Naimiy, an astrophysicist at the University of Sharjah, UAE.
If the pre-landing checks indicate that the spacecraft cannot land safely as planned, ispace says it could make further attempts on 26 April, 1 May or 3 May.
The navigation sensor of the spacecraft will be activated to adjust altitude and speed in order to ensure a soft landing. This carries an “inevitable risk”, he adds, because it will be the first and only use of the sensor in a lunar environment.
Lunar Observations with the M1 and JAXA Moon Missions, and Their Impact on the Arab Astronomy and Space Sciences
The craft’s battery needs to be refreshed before it deploys its two on-board rovers, one built by the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre and the other by the Japan Aeronautical Exploration Agency.
The M1 craft has a multi-camera system which can be used to take images of the rovers after they land.
Once deployed, Rashid will drive a short distance away from the lander, but stay inside the Atlas crater, says Sara AlMaeeni, an engineer on the communication system. The tiny rover, which weighs 10 kilogram and is 50 cm long, will use it’s camera to study the lunar soil and geological properties on the Moon.
JAXA will have a baseball-sized robot on the Moon that will collect data on the lunar surface, including regolith, that could be used to develop self-driving technology.
Scientists will be able to study the solar system thanks to the data collected by the US rover. Mounib El-Eid, an astronomer at the American University of Beirut, says the lunar surface has a record of the early Solar System. The Moon has no plate tectonics and has not been subject to surface erosions as Earth has, he explains.
Once night falls on the Moon the M1 will be switched off, which is twelve days after landing. This will almost certainly mark the end of its mission: neither the M1 lander nor the Rashid rover are equipped to survive the low temperatures during lunar night. AlMaeeni is anticipating that the battery won’t work on the second lunar day.
The data that the rover collects will be sent to the MBRSC. “It will take months or years to analyse it,” says Al-Naimiy, who is president of the Arab Union for Astronomy and Space Sciences (AUASS).
El-Eid hopes that the UAE’s first lunar mission will boost research in the Middle East. El-Eid, Lebanon’s representative at the AuASS, said that the focus shouldn’t just be on spending money to build rovers or spaceships, but on researching with the data.
ispace is working on both its second and third moon missions, which are expected to be launched in a couple years. For mission 2, “we are going to carry our own small rover and we can do some more scientific research”, says Ujiie.
Ispace lofted the M1 lander on December 11, 2022, in Tokyo. After tracing a roundabout, energy-efficient trajectory, it’s expected to reach the surface of Atlas Crater on the southeastern outer edge of Mare Frigoris at about 12:40 pm Eastern time Tuesday, which is 1:40 am Wednesday morning in Japan. It’s not a thing yet. Ispace would be a leading player in the lunar aerospace industry if they stuck the landing.
Ryo Ujiie, the chief technology officer of Ispace, is happy that they are the first commercial lunar landers. The most important thing is to learn from this mission. Ispace isn’t the first place to try to put a private craft on the moon. In 2019, the nonprofit Israeli organization SpaceIL sent a privately funded lander called Beresheet, but it crashed, along with a payload that included human DNA samples and thousands of tardigrades, tiny “water bears” that can survive almost anywhere.
The Ispace lander comes equipped with a large, 400-Newton thruster and six additional thrusters, enabling a controlled descent to the surface. With those thrusters, the navigation system, and four landing legs, Ujiie hopes the craft will achieve a soft touchdown. Engineers at mission control in Tokyo will be able to maintain visual contact and communication with the lander after the company chose its landing site.