HAKUTO-R Moon Mission: Japan
- A Japanese space startup Space Inc. launched a spacecraft to the moon on December 11, 2022. This is the first for any nation and for a private company.
- The national space agencies of the United States, Russia, and China have achieved soft landings on Earth’s nearest neighbor in the past half century but no companies have.
- Space Inc’s HAKUTO-R mission 1 took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.