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Japan launches moon lander and X-ray observatory
(spacenews.com)
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this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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And don't forget the Japanese Hakuto-R crashing last December. And we'll start finding out soon if the new batch of American CLPS landers will work.
As far as why - I have no idea why there are so many all of the sudden. For some reason the US and China are working on crewed moon landing programs and making a platoon of non-crewed landers to go with them. And for some reason Japan, India, and Israel all want in? And Russia wants to try to be relevant? I don't get why, or why now, but at least it's exciting.
I'm pretty sure this has something to do with using the Moon as a jumping-off point to the rest of the solar system. Assuming we can get a functioning colony on the Moon, it will be significantly easier and cheaper to get to Mars and potentially other planets as well. This might just be something I heard from a friend of a friend though, so don't quote me on it.
It'll definitely help develop technology that'll be useful for outer solar system missions.
It doesn't make sense as a stop between the Earth and Mars. You have to slow down to enter orbit, then speed back up to leave it. That's a waste of fuel unless there's a good reason to stop there, like for fueling or assembly, but it makes more sense to do that in Earth orbit using distributed life.
At least to some extend it is a subsidy program to prop up or maintain a national launch fleet against stiff commercial competition (SpaceX) and to renew the local expertise to keep the ageing fleet of ICBMs going. The moon was and is a convenient excuse to waste tax money on this. Japan is one of the cases of ramping up a thinly veiled threat of nuke delivery capacity without officially saying so.
I dunno about this take in this case. Most of the US CLPS landers are launching on Falcons. Literally all but 1 so far. PPE/HALO will launch on a Falcon Heavy. Gateway Logistics will launch on Falcons. The HLS options will launch on Starship and New Glenn. SLS will never fly a commercial flight, and Northrop is already getting big ICBM contracts.