Tokyo-headquartered company ispace announced on Thursday it is sending a tiny toy red Swedish house to the Moon.

Why? Because we've hurled so much junk to the Moon already, why not a house? More likely, The Register assumes, money. ispace claims it's art.

"The Moonhouse is an artistic and epic story that Mikael [Genberg] has envisioned for 25 years. The story of the Moonhouse, a small red house on the surface of the Moon, will finally come to fruition with ispace leading to an iconic artwork filled with new possibilities and new ideas," explained the private spacefaring concern.

Swedish artist Mikael Genberg is ispace’s final payload customer for the HAKUTO-R Mission 2, which is expected to bring the Resilience lunar lander and Tenacious micro rover to the Mare Frigoris in the Moon's northern hemisphere - a sun-drenched bit of prime real estate with a clear line of communication to Earth.

The house will hitch a ride to the Moon in the payload bay of the Resilience lander, secured to the front of the Tenacious rover. Eventually it will be deployed to the lunar surface. The launch is set to take place sometime after December 2024, aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

Genberg is known for creating whimsical architectual structures in unusual places - for instance, a treehouse hotel in Vasteras, Sweden, or an underwater hotel, also in Sweden. He placed a red house, similar to the Moonhouse, near the top of Stockholm's globe-esque Avicii Arena in 2009, and has been looking to replicate the work on the Moon for a number of years.

"The Moonhouse is a fantastic project, and we are incredibly pleased to be part of finally realizing it. The vision of the artwork merges with our own: to expand our planet and future, and to extend the sphere of human life into space," gushed ispace-Europe CEO Julien-Alexandre Lamamy.

ispace-Europe will be responsible for developing the Tenacious micro rover - one of the six payloads aboard the spacecraft. Aside from Moonhouse and Tenacious, payloads include water electrolyzer equipment, a food production module, a deep space radiation probe, and a commemorative alloy plate.

Tokyo-based ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada revealed that Resilience lander assembly and integration is complete and on schedule. "As we have said all along, Mission 2 development and mission planning are being determined based on feedback from the lessons learned during Mission 1."

Mission 1 of HAKUTO-R aimed to achieve a soft landing on the Moon in April 2023, but instead experienced a disappointing crash landing that resulted in lost communications.

The HAKUTO-R program's long-term goals include establishing commercial lunar transportation services. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/09/13/japan_ispace_moonhouse/