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Similarly, SpaceX had to postpone the launch of the private Japanese mission to “allow for additional pre-flight checkouts.” The launch was originally scheduled for November 30, then pushed to December 1, and later postponed indefinitely without providing a specific reason, SpaceX announced on Twitter.
On Wednesday, SpaceX tweeted: “Teams completed additional vehicle inspections and reviews; rocket and payload are looking good for launch of the ispace_inc HAKUTO-R mission 1.” It’s still not clear what the issue was with the rocket and why additional inspections were necessary.
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Tokyo’s ispace will attempt to deploy Hakuto-R’s Mission 1 (M1) lander to the lunar surface, which would make it the first private mission to successfully land on the Moon. The Hakuto-R M1 lander will also attempt to deliver its own payloads to the Moon, including the 22-pound (10-kilogram) Rashid rover built by the United Arab Emirates and a transformable ball-like robot, named SORA-Q, developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the TOMY toy company.
The same launch is also poised to deliver NASA’s Lunar Flashlight, a probe that’s designed to search for water ice in permanently shadowed craters on the Moon from a near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO).
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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk had previously stated that he’s aiming for a record-breaking 60 launches of the Falcon 9 rocket this year, but we’ll have to see if the hardest working rocket in the game can pull it off.
More: SpaceX Cargo Capsule Arrives at ISS With Tomato Seeds, Moon Med Kit, and More