cape canaveral a tokyo company aimed for the moon with its own private lander sunday blasting off atop a spacex rocket with the united arab emirates first lunar rover and a toylike robot from japan thats designed to roll around up there in the gray dustit will take nearly five months for the lander and its experiments to reach the moonthe company ispace designed its craft to use minimal fuel to save money and leave more room for cargo so its taking a slow lowenergy path to the moon flying 1 million miles 16 million kilometers from earth before looping back and intersecting with the moon by the end of aprilby contrast nasas orion crew capsule with test dummies took five days to reach the moon last month the lunar flyby mission ends sunday with a pacific splashdownthe ispace lander will aim for atlas crater in the northeastern section of the moons near side more than 50 miles 87 kilometers across and just over 1 mile 2 kilometers deep with its four legs extended the lander is more than 7 feet 23 meters tallwith a science satellite already around mars the uae wants to explore the moon too its rover named rashid after dubais royal family weighs just 22 pounds 10 kilograms and will operate on the surface for about 10 days like everything else on the missionin addition the lander is carrying an orangesized sphere from the japanese space agency that will transform into a wheeled robot on the moon also flying a solid state battery from a japanesebased spark plug company an ottawa ontario companys flight computer with artificial intelligence for identifying geologic features seen by the uae rover and 360degree cameras from a torontoarea companyhitching a ride on the rocket is a small nasa laser experiment that will fly to the moon on its own to hunt for ice in the permanently shadowed craters of the lunar south polethe ispace mission is called hakuto japanese for white rabbit in asian folklore a white rabbit is said to live on the moon a second lunar landing by the private company is planned for 2024 and a third in 2025founded in 2010 ispace was among the finalists in the google lunar xprize competition requiring a successful landing on the moon by 2018 the lunar rover built by ispace never launchedanother finalist an israeli nonprofit called spaceil managed to reach the moon in 2019 but instead of landing gently the spacecraft beresheet slammed into the moon and was destroyedwith sundays predawn launch from the cape canaveral space force station ispace is now on its way to becoming one of the first private entities to attempt a moon landing although not launching until early next year lunar landers built by pittsburghs astrobotic technology and houstons intuitive machines may beat ispace to the moon thanks to shorter cruise timesonly russia the us and china have achieved socalled soft landings on the moon beginning with the former soviet unions luna 9 in 1966