European rover heads to the Moon

A micro rover developed in Europe is on its way to the Moon as part of one of two missions launched this morning.

iSpace in Japan, which failed with its Hakuto-1 mission in April 2023, has established communications link with the RESILIENCE lunar lander that was launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket this morning with the Tenacious micro rover developed by its subsidiary in Luxembourg.

“We have established communication with the RESILIENCE lander, and have stabilized its attitude and power supply,” said Takeshi Hakamada, Founder & CEO of ispace. “We will make full use of the knowledge and experience gained in Mission 1 to prepare for the first orbit control maneuver scheduled in the near future. While the lander carries 6 payloads including the Tenacious micro rover, no deficiencies in the lander’s core system have been identified.”

The  SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket also included the Blue Ghost mission, named Ghost Riders in the Sky, from Firefly Aerospace in the US. This mission plans to deliver 10 science and technology instruments to the lunar surface as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative.

Ispace has released a transparent set of criteria known as Mission 2 Milestones between launch and landing and aims to achieve the success criteria established for each of these milestones.

As well as the micro rover, other payloads on the way to the Moon include water electrolyzer equipment from Takasago Thermal Engineering, a self contained food production experiment from Euglena and a deep space radiation probe developed by the Department of Space Science and Engineering, National Central University, Taiwan.

Also on its way to the Moon, Blue Ghost will spend approximately 45 days in transit, conducting health checks on each subsystem and begin payload science. Blue Ghost will then land in Mare Crisium and operate payloads for a complete lunar day, about 14 Earth days. The lander will then operate for several hours into the lunar night.

The projects on the mission include RadPC, a radiation tolerant PC developed by Montana State University that can recover from faults caused by ionizing radiation. Several RadPC prototypes have been tested aboard the ISS and Earth-orbiting satellites, but this is the biggest trial yet by demonstrating the computer’s ability to withstand space radiation as it passes through the Earth’s radiation belts, while in transit to the Moon, and on the lunar surface. RadPC has already been booted up after the launch this morning.