That’s a heck of a rideshare!
I’m so here for this moon cavalcade, and that’s the less interesting mission of the two. Best of luck to JAXA.
What’s up with all the moon landings lately? Russia and India were just in the news last week about their attempts at Moon landings.
There was a killer sale at the space parts store the ither day
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.
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.
It’s the new space race. Japan, Russia, Israel, and India were racing to be country 4 on the moon after USSR, USA, and China. India won the number 4 slot, and now the other three are shooting for 5. With SLS and Artemis paving the way for a lunar colony, everyone wants to be able to participate.
