ORLANDO, Fla. — SpaceX was back at the launch pad to send a couple of moonbound customers into space from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
A Falcon 9 lifted off at 2:38 a.m. Sunday from Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40 carrying private Japanese company ispace’s HAKUTO-R Mission 1 lunar lander, the first of a planned series of landers that, if successful, will make it the first commercial soft landing ever on the moon.
Also on board is NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s briefcase-sized Lunar Flashlight, that plans to map ice in the permanently shadowed spaces near the moon’s south pole. Both were successfully deployed about an hour after liftoff.
