Look at the photo of the Earth from space: it was made by the first private module

The Japanese company iSpace has announced that a spacecraft has been installed between the Earth and the spacecraft of the HAKUTO-R Mission 1

Engineers have published the first picture of our planet taken by a spacecraft.

Photo of the Earth from the lunar module. Image: iSpace

The photo was taken 19 hours afterseparation of the spacecraft from the launch module. In the photograph, the Earth resembles the growing Moon, as it usually looks from Earth. The ship of the HAKUTO-R Mission 1 mission has already reached a given trajectory and is moving away from our planet towards a natural satellite.

Earlier, iSpace announced the successful launch of the firstprivate lunar mission. The company's engineers confirmed that the landing module took a stable position in orbit, and all the module's power supply systems were launched in the correct mode.

Schematic of the HAKUTO-R mission. Image: iSpace

HAKUTO-R is the first private lunar mission. It consists of a lander built by iSpace and two robotic rovers built by the UAE and the Japanese Space Agency. 

The lander was launched on a Falcon 9 rocketfrom SpaceX on December 11 at 10:38 Moscow time. It will spend about a month in outer space and two weeks in orbit before landing on Earth's natural satellite. If the mission is successful, it will be the first time that a commercial company has delivered a payload to the Moon.

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On the cover: an artistic illustration of a lander on the moon. Image: iSpace