The Hakuto-R lunar lander, which was previously in orbit some 100 kilometers above the moon, must have already begun its descent to the lunar surface, said the commentator of the company's live video.

The lunar lander is temporarily behind the far side of the moon, he said, without the possibility of communicating with him for several tens of minutes.

It must then reappear, slow down its course and adjust its altitude, in order to perform a "soft landing" around 16:40 GMT Tuesday, a sequence carried out entirely automatically.

The success of the mission, however, is far from guaranteed. In April 2019, the Israeli organization SpaceIL saw its probe crash into the surface of the Moon.

"What we have accomplished so far is already a great achievement, and we are already applying the lessons learned from this flight to our future missions," Takeshi Hakamada, head and founder of ispace, said earlier this month.

Undated photo released by Japanese startup ispace on April 25, 2023 of the Hakuto-R Mission 1 lunar lander in the fairing of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket in an unspecified © location Handout/ispace/AFP

"I look forward to attending this historic day, which marks the beginning of a new era of commercial lunar missions."

Measuring 2 meters by 2.5 meters, the lunar lander has been in orbit around the moon since last month, after being launched in December from the US base of Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard a SpaceX rocket.

So far, only the United States, Russia and China have managed to land robots on the moon, located about 400,000 km from Earth.

India had also tried in 2019 to land a probe, named Vikram, but it had crashed.

"Rovers" on board

The ispace lunar lander carries several lunar vehicles, including a Japanese miniature model developed by the Japanese Space Agency in collaboration with toy manufacturer Takara Tomy.

Another lunar vehicle ("rover") built by the United Arab Emirates is also on board.

Undated photo released by Japanese start-up ispace on April 25, 2023 of the Hakuto-R program lunar lander at the IABG space test center in Germany © Handout / ispace / AFP

This Gulf country, a newcomer in the space race, sent an orbital probe to Mars in 2021. If his small 10-kilogram vehicle, named Rashid, succeeds in being deployed, he will carry out the first lunar mission in the Arab world.

The Japanese firm's Hakuto ("white rabbit" in Japanese) project was one of five finalists in the international Google Lunar XPrize competition, which ended without a winner, as no company managed to land a robot before the set date (2018).

Two other companies, U.S. companies Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines, are expected to take off later this year in an attempt to land on the moon.

These missions are carried out in partnership with NASA, which intends to develop the lunar economy and has commissioned private companies to transport scientific equipment and experiments to the Moon.

The US space agency plans, with its Artemis program, to land astronauts on the lunar surface in the coming years, establish a base there, and build a space station in orbit around the Moon.

Japan and the United States announced last year that they would cooperate to send a Japanese astronaut to the moon by the end of the decade.

© 2023 AFP