Japanese startup ispace said on Wednesday that its first attempt to make a soft landing on the moon had failed after losing contact with its HAKUTO-R Mission 1 lander, concluding it had most likely crashed on the lunar surface.
The lunar lander was scheduled to touch down on the moon at around 1:40 a.m. local time, however "no data was received indicating a touchdown" after the planned landing time, and engineers on the ground found they had lost contact with the spacecraft after a rapidly increased descent speed, according to a company statement.
"It has been determined that there is a high probability that the lander eventually made a hard landing on the moon's surface," and a successful landing on the moon and establishing communications in the mission "is no longer achievable," ispace said in the statement.
Flight controllers in Tokyo wait for a signal from the company's HAKUTO-R Mission 1 spacecraft after a landing attempt on the surface of the moon, April 26, 2023. /CFP
The company said its engineers are working to find the root cause of the failure, and pledged to move ahead with new missions in spite of the setback.
"Although we do not expect to complete the lunar landing at this time, we believe that we have fully accomplished the significance of this mission, having acquired a great deal of data and experience by being able to execute the landing phase," said Takeshi Hakamada, founder and CEO of ispace. "What is important is to feed this knowledge and learning back to Mission 2 and beyond so that we can make the most of this experience."
The CEO said they are currently developing Mission 2 and Mission 3, two further missions of the HAKUTO-R lunar exploration program.
Standing just over 2 meters tall and weighing 340 kilograms, the lander was launched onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket last December, and entered lunar orbit last month.
It was aiming for a landing site at the edge of Mare Frigoris in the moon's northern hemisphere where it would have deployed a two-wheeled, baseball-sized rover developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Tomy Co., Ltd. and Sony Group Corp, and a four-wheeled rover dubbed Rashid from the United Arab Emirates.
The lander was also carrying an experimental solid-state battery made by Niterra Co., Ltd. among other devices to gauge their performance on the moon.
(With input from Reuters, AFP)