The Japanese company ispace announced 6 May, that its Resilience lander entered orbit at 16:41 ET on the same day after the longest main engine run of approximately nine minutes. The company does not disclose the orbital parameters of the spacecraft.
Achieving lunar orbit is the seventh of the ten phases of the HAKUTO-R M2 mission, which began after pre-launch training in January and will end with a moon landing. It won't happen sooner 5 June Fr 15:24 in the Eastern time.
Resilience took off into space 15 January on a Falcon rocket 9, which also contained the Blue Ghost landing module 1 Firefly Aerospace. Resilience had a low-energy trajectory, to minimize driving forces, after orbiting the moon 14 in February he flew away 1,1 million kilometers from Earth, before returning to lunar orbit.
The spacecraft should land near the center of the Frigoris Sea, about c 60 degrees of northern latitude. The company stated, which considers three alternative landing sites, if necessary, but all of them will allow boarding to 8 June. The spacecraft is carrying several demonstration technology and other payloads from Japanese companies and a Taiwanese university. It also carries a small model house called the Moonhouse by Swedish artist Mikael Henberg.
in addition, the landing module is carried by Tenacious - a "micro-rover", developed by the European subsidiary of ispace, ispace Europe. Tenacious will explore the region around the landing site, and will also collect lunar regolith, ownership of which will be transferred to NASA under the agreement on 5000 dollars, which the agency concluded in 2020 year as part of the initiative to demonstrate the rights to lunar resources.
Resilience is iSpace's second lunar landing mission. The first crashed during a landing attempt in April 2023 year due to software issues. The company's next lander is being built by its American subsidiary ispace US. The launch of this lander is scheduled for 2026 year as part of the mission, which is part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services program (CLPS). After that in 2027 will launch the landing module, built in Japan.
30 the company announced in April, which is part of the team, chosen by the Japanese space agency JAXA to develop a small orbiter for mapping water ice deposits on the Moon. Project, funded by the country's Space Strategy Fund, heads the Tokyo Institute of Sciences, and ispace said, which will play a "key role" in the development, launch and operation of the spacecraft. The company is negotiating a contract with the Tokyo Institute of Science, to finalize your role in the project and payment.
Source: https://spacenews.com/resilience-lunar-lander-enters-orbit-around-the-moon/