OMOTENASHI

OMOTENASHI [JAXA]

OMOTENASHI [JAXA]

OMOTENASHI [JAXA]

OMOTENASHI (Outstanding Moon exploration Technologies demonstrated by Nano Semi-Hard Impactor) is a small lunar mission designed jointly by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the University of Tokyo.

It will demonstrate the technology for low-cost and very small spacecraft to explore the lunar surface. This technology could open up new possibilities for future missions to inexpensively investigate the surface of the moon. The CubeSat will also take measurements of the radiation environment near the moon as well as on the lunar surface.

OMOTENASHI is a 6U CubeSat to be put onto a course to the moon. The cubesat provides attitude control and puts itself into a impact trajectory. Before reaching the surface, the Cubesat spins up and deploys the 0.7 kg surface probe featuring an inflatble airbag and a solid rocket motor. Then the airbag is inflated andjust before impact the solid rocket motor is fired an the surface probe is deparated. The probe performs a semi-hard landing at a velocity of about 30 m/s.

OMOTENASHI is one of 10 cubesats carried with the Artemis 1 (Orion CM-002) mission into a heliocentric orbit in cis-lunar space on the maiden flight of the SLS (Block 1) iCPS launch vehicle in November 2022.

After deployment it was found tumbling. It could not be stabilized in time to conduct the landing mission, neither for a back-up mission to fire the rocket motor for an hard impact on the moon.