Japanese firm declares lunar mission a failure after crash landing

The makers of a private lunar lander made by Japan have officially declared the mission a failure after the mission crashed while attempting to land on the moon.

Resilience, a lander owned by the Tokyo-based company ispace, was reported to have left lunar orbit as planned and that the mission appeared to be proceeding well.

Resilience, which was carrying a mini rover, was tipped off by flight controllers just before its hour-long descent and scheduled touchdown on the moon’s surface. As they attempted to regain contact with the lander, ground support was silenced, and the mission was later declared ineffective.

The attempt to land on the ground was abruptly ended by the company’s livestream.

After the failed mission, Takeshi Hakamada, the CEO and founder of ispace, apologised to everyone who contributed. “We have to take the facts seriously what happened,” he said.

Two years after the Japanese start-up’s first attempt to reach the moon was met with a crash landing, the company’s second unsuccessful attempt to soft land on the surface of the moon.

The Hakuto-R Mission 1 by the company, which was launched in December 2022, crashed during its final descent after the lander was mistaken to believe it was lower than it was.

Resilience, the follow-up to that mission, was launched in January from Florida on a lengthy, roundabout journey. It shared a ride on a SpaceX rocket with Blue Ghost from Firefly Aerospace, making the US company the first private company to perform a “fully successful” soft landing there when it first reached the moon in March of this year.

The Mare Frigoris, or Sea of Cold, was the location of the Resilience lander’s 2.5-meter (7. 5-foot) landing pad for the flat, flat area with few boulders.

Before the European-built rover, named Tenacious, was lowered onto the lunar surface this weekend, Resilience was anticipating beaming back images within hours of landing. The rover, which was equipped with a high-definition camera and made of carbon fiber-reinforced plastic, would have then scouted the area and collected lunar dirt for NASA.

A toy-sized red house by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg was also present in Resilience. In a nod to Hakamada’s vision of people living and working on the moon as early as the 2040s, the model Swedish-style cottage was called “Moonhouse.”

The Japanese entrepreneur’s vision is still unsure as a result of ispace’s second failed landing. By 2027, NASA is expected to start launching the aerospace company’s upcoming, much bigger lander.

Regardless of the outcome, the Japanese company’s chief financial officer, Jumpei Nozaki, promised to carry on its lunar search even after Friday’s failed mission.

However, Jeremy Fix, the company’s chief engineer for the US division of ispace, claimed last month that the company cannot afford to have “infinite funds” and cannot afford to have repeat failures.