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| Attribute | LUPEX (ISRO lander + JAXA rover) Lunar Polar Exploration Mission Trust: Agency-primary Last verified Remove × | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Operator | JAXA | JAXA + ISRO | Blue Origin |
| Prime contractor | Mitsubishi Electric | JAXA + ISRO | Blue Origin (with Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Draper, Astrobotic, Honeybee Robotics on prime team) |
| Status | Landed | In development | In development |
| Customer | JAXA | JAXAISRO | NASA-HLS |
| Launch date | 2023-09-06 | 2028 (NET) | 2030 (NET — Artemis V crewed); uncrewed demo 2027 |
| Landing date | 2024-01-19 | — | — |
| Landing site | Near Shioli crater, Mare Nectaris (~10 m precision vs 100 m target) | Lunar south pole (permanently shadowed crater margin) | Lunar south pole — 30-day surface stays |
| Payload | LEV-1 (2.1 kg hopper) + LEV-2 'SORA-Q' (0.25 kg sphere) (2024-01-19) | ~350 kg rover with drilling to 1.5 m + ISRO lander (2026-05-28) | 20 t reusable / 30 t one-way to surface; crew 2-4 for up to 30 days (2026-01-04) |
| Contract value | — | — | $3.4B (2023-05-19) |
| Outcome | First Japanese soft landing; made Japan the 5th nation to soft-land on the Moon. One of two main engines failed at ~50 m altitude; lander touched down on its side but still met 100-m precision goal. Survived four lunar-night cycles despite not being designed for it; declared concluded 2024-08-23. | Joint ISRO-JAXA water-ice prospecting mission, designated Chandrayaan-5 by India. India's cabinet approved Phase A on 2025-03-10. Launches on JAXA's H3. Carries American and European instruments alongside Indian and Japanese ones. | Selected May 2023 as second HLS provider for sustained Artemis-era lunar operations. Full-scale prototype delivered to NASA Johnson Space Center in early 2026 for astronaut training. Completed third pressurized suit-test campaign with NASA Johnson's Active Response Gravity Offload System (ARGOS). |
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Underlying dataset: GET /api/moon/landers. Methodology: /moon/methodology.