A Japanese company likely crashed a spacecraft into the moon while attempting a soft landing on Tuesday, causing an abrupt end to its five-month journey from the launch pad to the lunar surface.
The company, ispace, invited the world to watch along with the Tokyo-based mission controller with a live stream of the event on April 25th. The impressive landing sequence lasted about an hour as the spacecraft performed an engine throttle burn and followed automated commands to adjust the Hakuto-R’s descent direction and speed for its descent.
But several minutes after the expected touchdown, mission control was unable to communicate with the spacecraft. With the team of engineers clearly disappointed, ispace officials said they had to assume the landing was unsuccessful. Takeshi Hakamada, CEO of ispace, said they will continue to investigate the probe’s condition.
“At the moment, what I can say is that we are very proud of the fact that we have already accomplished many things during this Mission 1,” he said. “We got actual flight data during the descent phase. This is a great achievement for future missions.”
A daring company is about to attempt a moon landing. You can watch it.
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Although it’s been 60 years since the first uncrewed moon landing, it’s still a daunting task, with less than half of the missions succeeding. Unlike Earth, the Moon’s atmosphere is very thin, providing virtually no resistance to slowing the spacecraft as it approaches Earth. Furthermore, there is no GPS system on the moon to help guide the craft to its landing point. Engineers have to make up for these shortcomings from 239,000 miles.
Takeshi Hakamada, CEO of ispace, said the company will continue to investigate the situation to determine what might have gone wrong.
credit: ispace/youtube screenshot
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This is not the first time that the private sector has attempted to reach the moon. For example, in 2019, an Israeli nonprofit and company collaborated on the $100 million Beresheet mission, which crash-landed on the moon after a steering component failed. The accident will likely scatter some interesting artifacts on the lunar surface in the process.
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For an ispace customer, a failed landing meant another dream was indefinitely postponed: the first Arab moon mission. The iSpace probe was supposed to carry the UAE’s Rashid rover(Opens in a new tab) to the Moon, which will explore the Atlas crater. Along with the Emirati rover, a Japanese space program robot was on board.
Hakuto-R is the first of many other commercial missions expected to attempt this feat soon, many of which are products of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program.(Opens in a new tab). The program was created in 2018 to hire the private sector to help get cargo to the moon. Ispace has not been able to participate directly in the NASA program because it is not an American company, but it is cooperating in one of the contracts led by Draper Technologies of Massachusetts, which is expected to land on the moon in 2025.
Ispace executives look on as they await word on whether the Hakuto-R lander will be successful on April 25, 2023.
Credit: ispace
These upcoming missions will support the US space agency’s lunar ambitions, supply cargo and experiments to the surface before the astronauts arrive in 2025 or later, as well as kick-start the future lunar economy.
Which one will be the first to make the flight intact? The commercial race is on, with many more opportunities this year.
“History can only be made by those who (face) challenges, and challenges would not be possible without taking risks,” said Yoichi Tsuda, a professor of space sciences at the University of Tokyo, during the live broadcast. “Only those who dream can take risks. So ispace teams, you are all excellent dreamers.”