Artistic impression of ispace’s Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander.

The rocket is ready for launch. The current state of the spaceflight industry and the changing way in which we are exploring space are exemplified by the mission.

It is a fairly routine launch for the company. There is an assortment of goodies bound for the lunar surface in ispace's Hakuto-R spaceship. The moon-bound probe will look for water ice from the vantage point of a rarely used orbit.

The launch of the Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to take place at 3:39 a.m. On November 30th. There is a backup chance on Thursday at 3:37 a.m. if the launch has to be scrubbed. There is an hour and a half later. The live broadcast should begin 15 minutes before the liftoff, which you can watch at the live stream above.

About eight minutes into the mission, the first stage of the Falcon 9 will attempt to land on the landing zone. The deployment of the Hakuto-R is expected to happen at 46 minutes.

It is not a big deal, but it has historic consequences. A product of Tokyo-based ispace, Hakuto-R, will attempt to deploy the company's M1 lander to the lunar surface. The first private company to accomplish this feat will be ispace. Commercial providers routinely deliver goods to the Moon if a mission succeeds. The first low-cost delivery to the moon is by ispace.

ispace Hakuto-R Mission 1 profile and milestones.

The Hakuto-R M1 lander will perform exploratory duties as a stationary probe, but it will also attempt to deliver several payloads to the surface.

An artificial intelligence-powered flight computer from the Canadian Space Agency is one of the Hakuto-R payloads. The Moon's Atlas crater is expected to be the site of the Hakuto-R M1 landers landing.

Conceptual image showing the SORA-Q transformable robot working on the Moon.

Private companies have tried before to land a lander on the moon. The distinction goes to Israel's SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace industries, which attempted to place the Beresheet lander on the moon. Beresheet crashed onto the lunar surface due to computer issues. The United States, the Soviet Union, and China have all successfully landed their landers on the moon.

Artistic impression of NASA’s Lunar Flashlight.

JPL's Lunar Flashlight is a probe that is designed to work around the moon. If that sounds familiar, it is most likely because you are thinking of NASA's CAPSTONE probe, which became the first satellite to work in the area. There is a future space station called Gateway, but there is also a different mission called Lunar Flashlight.

From where it will look for water ice in shadowed craters, the suitcase-sized probe will come to within 9 miles of the lunar south pole. The beams of light can be absorbed by the ice on the water. The more ice can be seen on the surface, the better.

Barbara Cohen, a principal investigator at NASA, said in a statement that they will be using lasers to look for signs of water ice on the moon. Our mission will contribute to our understanding of where water ice is on the Moon and how it got there.

There is a lot to unpack with this launch. The launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is expected to happen early tomorrow morning.

The failed missions to the moon remind us that space is hard.