An artist’s illustration of the Lunar Flashlight mission. | Image: NASA
The Artemis I mission isn’t the only lunar mission happening this month. On Wednesday, November 30th, a SpaceX Falcon 9 is expected to launch a commercial Japanese lander called Hakuto-R to the Moon, carrying the United Arab Emirates Rashid rover. And there will also be an extra payload tucked inside the rocket: a tiny orbiter called Lunar Flashlight.
As part of a wave of increased commercial interest in the Moon, the lander could be among the first private missions to land on the Moon — although, as the Israeli lander Beresheet demonstrated when it crashed into the Moon in 2019, touching down safely on the Moon’s surface still remains a challenge that a private mission has yet to overcome. As for the small Rashid rover, this is the…