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The
privately built Hakuto-R Mission 1 lunar lander, which launched
from Florida in December, had encountered "several" mission
hiccups during its trek toward the moon, but many of them were
fixable during flight and none jeopardized the craft's
anticipated landing in late April, ispace's chief executive,
Takeshi Hakamada, told reporters.
The M1 lander will mark the first lunar landing by a private
company, if successful. Only the governments of the United
States, Russia and China have nailed such a feat, with landing
attempts by India and a private Israeli company ending in
failure in recent years.
The M1 lander is expected to deploy a two-wheeled,
baseball-sized rover from Japan's JAXA space agency and a
four-wheeled Rashid rover made by the United Arab Emirates.
The Tokyo, Japan-based company celebrated a mission milestone in
January when the M1 lander completed a full month of stable
deep-space flight operations. On Jan. 20, the spacecraft reached
its farthest point from Earth some 8.5 million miles away (1.375
million km).
Among the mission hiccups the spacecraft encountered were
"brief" unexpected sensor issues within its guidance, navigation
and control system, the company said in a statement.
The company said mission managers tweaked parameters to fix the
system, which is the onboard computer that will help position
the lander for its surface landing.
(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Chris Reese and Himani
Sarkar)
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