One mission would send a state-of-the-art lunar rover, in development by Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), to the moon aboard a Starship cargo lander as soon as fiscal year 2032.

The autonomous 55-pound (25-kilogram) rover is called IDEFIX and is part of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Martian Moon Exploration (MMX) probe that aims to collect samples of the ...

Two commercial lunar landers are currently on their way to the Moon, and at least two more are set to follow this year under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. Meanwhile, ...

NASA agreed to provide two landing slots to Japan in exchange for its role in developing and providing a rover that astronauts ... s first manned lunar missions. JAXA said it has not chosen ...

The only entry from Japan, a small robotic rover developed by Yoshida’s Team Hakuto is capable of being deployed from a light spacecraft, and was one of five finalists. Although no Moon missions ...

“Takara–Tomy benefits by advertizing how these robots will be used on the Moon and from selling replicas, while JAXA benefits from gaining robots to explore the lunar surface,” he explains.

A new year of lunar exploration kicked off early Wednesday, when two robotic landers and a small rover began their journeys to the moon. A SpaceX rocket lifted off at 1:11 a.m. ET from NASA’s ...