The lunar lander, developed by the Japanese company ispace, entered lunar orbit and attempted to land on the moon at the end of April. Tokyo-based ispace said the HAKUTO-R Mission 1 lander entered orbit at 21:24 ET on March 20 after its main engine burned for a few minutes. The company does not disclose the parameters of the trajectory, but says the maneuver was successful.

The HAKUTO-R 1 mission launched on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 in December and set off in a low-energy orbit that took it 1.4 million kilometers from Earth before returning to its rendezvous point with the Moon. On February 27, the company announced plans to enter lunar orbit in the second half of March, but did not reveal a specific date for the launch maneuver.

The launch is the seventh of 10 stages defined by ispace for the mission, which begins with launch preparations. The last three stages are the completion of “orbit control maneuvers”, the landing itself and the transition to a stable operational state after landing.

Company officials said in February that the mission went well, although engineers had been dealing with minor issues such as the spacecraft’s temperature being higher than expected and the onboard computer restarting several times. “We encountered a few anomalies, but we’ve already fixed those issues,” said Ryo Ujie, chief technical officer of ispace.

In late April, the spacecraft will attempt to land in Atlas Crater, located on the rim of Mare Frigoris in the northeastern quadrant of the Moon’s near face. On March 21, the company announced that it will announce a specific landing date soon. Mission 1 carries a load of customers from companies and organizations such as the small Rashid rover developed by the United Arab Emirates.

The company is working on a second lander, Mission 2, which is similar in design to the spacecraft currently in lunar orbit. It is scheduled to launch in 2024 with another set of customer payloads and a “micro rover” developed by ispace. Mission 3 will use a larger lander developed by US subsidiary ispace in partnership with Draper, which won NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services award last July to fly payloads to the far side of the moon.

A successful landing would make ispace the first private enterprise to land on the moon, and only the fourth overall after the governments of the former Soviet Union, United States, and China. ispace, which is preparing to land on the moon, is also preparing to go public. On March 8, the company announced that it will list its shares on the growing market of the Tokyo Stock Exchange on April 12. The company will announce the prices of these shares on April 3. It has raised nearly $200 million in several private equity rounds.