‘High probability spacecraft crashed on lunar surface,’ says Tokyo-based space firm

A Japanese startup’s spacecraft apparently crashed while attempting to land on the lunar surface early on Wednesday, losing contact moments before touchdown and sending its controllers scrambling to figure out what exactly happened. The unmanned Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander had been scheduled to touch down on the Moon’s surface overnight, but about 25 minutes after the landing was to have occurred, the company could not establish contact. More than six hours after communication stopped with the spacecraft, the Tokyo-based company ispace finally admitted what everyone had suspected, saying there was “a high probability” that the lander had slammed into the moon. It was a disappointing setback for ispace, which after a 4 1/2-month mission had been on the verge of doing what only three countries have done so far– successfully land a spacecraft on the moon. Takeshi Hakamada, founder and CEO of ispace, held out hope even after contact was lost as the lander descended the final 33 feet (10 meters), traveling around 25 kph. Flight controllers peered at their screens in Tokyo as minutes went by with only silence from the moon. A grim-faced team surrounded Hakamada as he announced, “We have to assume that we could not complete the landing on the lunar surface.” “It has been determined that there is a high probability that the lander eventually made a hard landing on the moon’s surface,” the company said in a statement. The Japanese company said its engineers were working to establish why the landing had failed. If all had gone well, ispace would have been the first private business to pull off a lunar landing. Hakamada vowed to try again, saying a second moonshot is already in the works for next year. Only three governments have successfully touched down on the moon: Russia, the United States and China. An Israeli nonprofit tried to land on the moon in 2019, but its spacecraft was destroyed on impact. “If space is hard, landing is harder,” tweeted Laurie Leshin, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “I know from personal experience how awful this feels.” Leshin worked on NASA’s Mars Polar lander that crashed on the red planet in 1999. The 7-foot (2.3-meter) Japanese lander carried a mini lunar rover for the United Arab Emirates and a toy like robot from Japan designed to roll around in the moon dust. There were also items from private customers on board. Named Hakuto, Japanese for white rabbit, the spacecraft had targeted Atlas crater in the northeastern section of the moon’s near side, more than 50 miles (87 kilometers) across and just over 1 mile (2 kilometers) deep. It took a long, roundabout route to the moon following its December liftoff, beaming back photos of Earth along the way. The lander entered lunar orbit on March 21. Founded in 2010, ispace hopes to start turning a profit as a one-way taxi service to the moon for other businesses and organizations. The company has already raised $300 million to cover the first three missions, according to Hakamada. “We will keep going, never quit lunar quest,” he said. For this test flight, the two main experiments were government-sponsored: the UAE’s 22-pound (10-kilogram) rover Rashid, named after Dubai’s royal family, and the Japanese Space Agency’s orange-sized sphere designed to transform into a wheeled robot on the moon. With a science satellite already around Mars and an astronaut aboard the International Space Station, the UAE was seeking to extend its presence to the moon. The moon is suddenly hot again, with numerous countries and private companies clamoring to get on the lunar bandwagon. China has successfully landed three spacecraft on the moon since 2013, and U.S., China, India and South Korea have satellites currently circling the moon. NASA’s first test flight in its new moonshot program, Artemis, made it to the moon and back late last year, paving the way for four astronauts to follow by the end of next year and two others to actually land on the moon a year after that. Hakuto and the Israeli spacecraft named Beresheet were finalists in the Google Lunar X Prize competition requiring a successful landing on the moon by 2018. The $20 million grand prize went unclaimed. Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News, India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.