The Japanese company ispace is on its way to land a private module on the Moon

Japanese space startup ispace’s lunar lander has reached its furthest distance from Earth and, despite minor technical problems during the trip to the moon, is on track for a lunar landing attempt in late April, executives said. from the company last Monday.

The privately built Hakuto-R Mission 1 lunar lander, which launched from Florida in December, had encountered “several” mission hiccups during its journey to the moon, but many of them could be fixed in-flight and none. jeopardized the early landing of the craft in late April. said Takeshi Hakamada.

If successful, the M1 lander will mark the first lunar landing by a private company. Only the US, Russian and Chinese governments have accomplished such a feat, with landing attempts by India and a private Israeli company ending in failure in recent years.

The M1 lander is expected to deploy a baseball-sized two-wheeled rover from Japan’s JAXA space agency and a four-wheeled Rashid rover made by the United Arab Emirates.

The Tokyo, Japan-based company celebrated a mission milestone in January when the M1 lander completed a full month of stable flight operations in deep space. On January 20, the spacecraft reached its furthest point from Earth at about 8.5 million miles (1.375 million km).

Among the mission setbacks the spacecraft encountered were unexpected sensor problems within its guidance, navigation and control system, the company said in a statement.

The company said mission managers tweaked the parameters to fix the system, or the onboard computer that will help position the lander for landing on the surface.