SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Watch ispace attempt to land on the moon for the first time:
After five long months journeying through space, ispace's Hakuto-R lander is ready to greet the lunar surface.The Japanese company is expecting to land Hakuto-R at 12:40 PM EST today. If successful, this first mission will no doubt be a huge boon for ispace's ambitious plans to send two subsequent landers to the moon in 2024 and 2025. It would also make them the first private company to land on the moon, and the first spacecraft from Japan to do so. (China, the United States, and the USSR have been the only nations to reach the lunar surface.)This first mission, appropriately named Mission 1, kicked off last December when a SpaceX Falcon 9 launched the lander into space. Since then, the lander has performed a number of maneuvers to stay on track in its path to the moon. At its farthest point, Hakuto-R traveled as much as 1.4 million kilometers from Earth.
The livestream will kick-off one hour prior to landing at 11:40 EST.
Link to stream.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by canopic jug on Tuesday April 25, @05:46PM
I was able to turn on the Youtube streaming at the right time but they cut to some stock footage which I eventually paused. When I unpaused it, I caught only a little bit before their admonition to not give up the quest and then the stream stopped. I guessed at that point it had failed and that was confirmed when the window filled with video recommendations on the theme of failure.
It's too bad. I had no expectations that a private company would pull off a successful landing but it would have been a nice advancement for society.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.