A little house with a gabled roof has flown to the Moon.

As previously written by Naked Science, on January 15, a Falcon 9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral carrying two lunar missions, each following its own trajectory after being deployed into space. Both spacecraft were developed by private companies. One of them is called Blue Ghost and is part of NASA's program for commercial cargo delivery to the Moon in support of the new lunar program "Artemis." It is expected to land in the Sea of Crises around early March.

The other mission, named Hakuto-R Mission 2, was developed by the Japanese company ispace. Its main component is the lunar lander Resilience, which stands over two meters tall and is the same width. It was created with the same goal as Blue Ghost—to demonstrate technology in order to offer services to the global space industry in the future.

As indicated by the last part of the mission's name, this is already the second attempt to fully realize it: the first, identical spacecraft crashed on the Moon in 2023 due to an incorrect altitude calculation by the onboard computer.

The current Japanese private module, like its predecessor, has "taken along" a small lunar rover; however, in the first unsuccessful attempt, it was a product from the United Arab Emirates, while for the new mission, the company created the rover independently. The height of the rover, named Tenacious, is only 26 centimeters, and it weighs five kilograms (on Earth). Engineers refer to the device as a "micro-rover."

Despite its modest size, it can not only traverse the lunar surface but also perform useful tasks: it can scoop lunar soil with its "shovel" and capture detailed images with its camera. This will allow for the collection of interesting information, such as the properties of lunar dust, which posed challenges for the Apollo astronauts in the past.

In addition, the Hakuto-R Mission 2 carries two unusual payloads. One of them is a nickel plate, on which the preamble of the UNESCO charter is "inscribed" in 275 languages through nanograving: "The thoughts of war arise in the minds of people; therefore, the idea of peace must be ingrained in the minds of people." The disc also contains an entire collection of great works of art and literature, including the text of "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

The information carrier has been named the "Memory Disc." As one might guess, its creation was an initiative of UNESCO. The organizers of this project envision it as a "time capsule": the disc is expected to withstand extreme conditions on the lunar surface for millions of years, thus serving as a repository of humanity's memory and cultural heritage.

Finally, the most peculiar part of the mission is a roughly 10-centimeter aluminum model of a typical house with a gabled roof, painted with radiation-resistant paint. This creation is by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg, who called his idea "crazy but poetic." According to Genberg, he has dreamed for a quarter of a century of seeing one of those cozy houses he loves from his native Sweden on the Moon. To realize this dream, he raised donations and reportedly accumulated around 7-10 million Swedish kronor, which is approximately 65-90 million rubles.

The little house on the surface of Earth's natural satellite is expected to accommodate the rover. The landing site selected is the Sea of Cold, located north of the Sea of Rains. Hakuto-R Mission 2 is set to travel there over the next few months, as planned for its flight trajectory. The landing is scheduled for this spring.