TOKYO, April 25 (Reuters) – Japanese startup ispace inc ( 9348.T ) said its attempt to make the first private moon landing failed after losing contact with its Hakuto-R Mission 1 (M1) lander, which ended it is likely to fall. on the surface of the moon.
“We lost communication, so we had to assume we couldn’t complete the landing on the lunar surface,” founder and Chief Executive Takeshi Hakamada said in a company live stream.
It’s the second setback for the private space developer in a week after SpaceX’s Starship rocket spectacularly exploded minutes after it lifted off from its launch pad.
A private company has never succeeded in a lunar landing. Only the United States, the former Soviet Union and China have soft-landed spacecraft on the moon, with attempts in recent years by India and a private Israeli company ending in failure.
Shares in iSpace, which delivers payloads such as rovers to the moon and sells related data, were not traded on Wednesday morning but indicated that they had fallen below their daily limits. The stock debuted on the Tokyo Stock Exchange just two weeks ago and has doubled in value since then.
Japan’s top government spokesman, Hirokazu Matsuno, said that while the mission was not accomplished, the country wants to “continue to try” ispace because its efforts are significant in the development of a domestic space industry.
Japan, which has set its own goal of sending Japanese astronauts to the moon by the late 2020s, has had some recent setbacks. The national space agency last month had to destroy its new medium-lift H3 rocket on its way to space after its second stage engine failed to ignite. Its solid-fuel Epsilon rocket also failed after launch in October.
BRAKES ON A SKI SLOPE
Four months after launching from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a SpaceX rocket, the M1 lander appeared set to autonomously stop at about 12:40 pm Eastern time (1640 GMT Tuesday), with animation based on live telemetry data showing it coming as close as 90 meters (295 feet) from the moon’s surface.
At the expected time of touchdown, mission control lost contact with the lander and engineers appeared anxious on the live stream as they waited for a signal confirming its fate that never came.
“Our engineers will continue to investigate the situation,” Hakamada said. “At this moment, what I can tell you is that we are very proud of the fact that we have accomplished so much on this Mission 1.”
The lander completed eight of the 10 space mission objectives that will provide important data for the next landing attempt in 2024, he added.
About an hour before the planned touchdown, the 2.3-meter-tall M1 began its landing phase, gradually tightening its orbit around the moon from 100 km (62 miles) above the surface to about 25 km , traveling at nearly 6,000 km/hour (3,700 mph ).
At that speed, slowing the lander down to the right speed against the moon’s gravitational pull would be like slamming on the brakes on a bicycle right at the edge of a ski-jumping slope, said Chief Technology Officer Ryo Ujiie.
The craft is aiming for a landing site on the edge of Mare Frigoris in the moon’s northern hemisphere where it will deploy a two-wheeled, baseball-sized rover developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Tomy Co Ltd (7867.T ) and Sony Group Corp (6758.T). It also plans to deploy a four-wheeled rover called Rashid from the United Arab Emirates.
The lander carried an experimental solid-state battery made by Niterra Co Ltd ( 5334.T ) among other devices to measure their performance on the moon.
The mission is insured by Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Co, an MS&AD Insurance Group ( 8725.T ) unit, and ispace said it may receive some compensation.
Reporting by Kantaro Komiya; Editing by Chang-Ran Kim and Stephen Coates
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.