Development Progress of the First ispace Private Lunar Exploration Mission

摘要

As a start-up company based in Japan, Luxembourg and the U.S., ispace is developing small, lightweight lunar landers and rovers to establish a low-cost platform for scheduled transportation. Our first commercial lunar exploration program--HAKUTO-R consists of two lunar missions: A lunar landing mission in 2021 and the deployment of a rover for surface exploration in 2023. With Draper as the lead of the team to participate in NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program and providing precise landing capability, ispace is focusing on designing the lander vehicle and preparing to operate its first soft landing mission. This paper briefly describes the lander design of each subsystems and reports our recent development progress.