Space & Astronomy

Japanese firm's first attempt to land on the Moon has ended in failure

By T.K. Randall
April 27, 2023

Image: Eugene Cernan on the Moon During the Apollo 17 Mission
Credit: Harrison Schmitt (1972) / (PD) NASA While NASA gets things ready for its attempt to land humans on the Moon within the next few years, Japanese company ispace has been preparing for its own record-breaking lunar landing.

With the goal of becoming the first private company ever to land a spacecraft on the Moon, the firm launched its own unmanned Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander back in December.

The lander had been scheduled to touchdown on the lunar surface on April 25th, but unfortunately things didn't go quite according to plan; the spacecraft failed to phone home after its descent and the team was unable to re-establish contact with it.

As things stand, it seems likely that the probe was destroyed upon impact with the Moon."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 next task will be to find out exactly what went wrong.

"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," said CEO Takeshi Hakamada.

"What is important is to feed this knowledge and learning back to Mission 2 and beyond."

Source: NDTV.com

Tags: Moon, Japan