A Japanese space company will attempt today (25/4) to land a spacecraft on the moon. The spaceship Hakuto-R Mission 1 ispace will begin its descent towards the lunar surface at approximately 18:40 (Greece time) possibly marking the world’s first moon landing for a commercially developed spacecraft.

The craft launched, carrying a SpaceX rocket, from Cape Canaveral, Florida on December 11. Since then, it has taken a three-month journey to orbit the moon, which is located approx. 239,000 miles (383,000 km) from Earth, using a low-energy orbit.

Live the landing of the ship:

Hakuto-R, carrying the Rashid rover, which was built by the Dubai Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center (MBRSC), in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — the first lunar spacecraft built by Arabia.

In history, only three countries have carried out a controlled lunar landing – the United States, Russia and China. The US remains the only country to have put men on the moon.

Japanese company ispace, which built Hakuto-R, is taking a different approach to previous lunar missions, aiming to land its spacecraft as a for-profit enterprise rather than under the flag of a single country.

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

ispace prepares for mishaps. “Recognizing the possibility of an anomaly during the mission, the results will be weighed and evaluated against the criteria and incorporated into future missions already underway between now and 2025,” the company wrote in a Dec. 11 post.

If successful, the 22-pound (10-kilogram) Rashid rover will spend “most of the 14-day lunar day exploring Atlas Crater in the Moon’s northeast,” according to the European Space Agency, which helped design the rover.

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