Akihabara News (Tokyo) – Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) will be teaming up with Japanese companies and a university to send a tiny robot to collect data on the Moon.
JAXA will collaborate with Tomy Company (a toy company), Sony, and Doshisha University in the process of developing a transformable lunar robot that it intends to send to the Moon for data collection–data which will aid in the design of a pressurized rover that can carry a human crew.
ispace, a Tokyo-based commercial lunar exploration company, signed a contract in April with JAXA offering its lunar lander to help the space agency transport the transformable lunar robot to the Moon. The company plans to send its first lunar lander next year as part of its commercial lunar exploration program (Hakuto-R). The contract was won in an open bidding process.
The as yet unnamed lunar robot, which is said to be roughly the size of a baseball, will be integrated into ispace’s lunar lander and deployed upon landing on the Moon. The small robot will then acquire and transfer telemetry and lunar imagery via ispace’s lander back to JAXA, and this data will then be used to design the rover currently under development.
Founder and CEO of ispace Takeshi Hakamada says he is “pleased to make history as the first commercial service provider to a governmental lunar surface mission in Japan.”