The private Japanese company Ispace announced on Wednesday the failure of the mission to land on the Moon, after having lost contact with the spacecraft, which probably crashed on lunar soil.
“There is a high probability that the ‘Lunar Lander’ lander has finally made a hard landing on the surface of the Moon,” Ispace said in a statement.
“We have no plans to resume the landing,” admitted CEO and founder of the start-up, Takeshi Hakamada, more than six hours after Ispace lost contact with the Hakuto-R spacecraft.
The Japanese ship ceased to have contact with the control center that guided it from Tokyo, and the flight controllers accompanying the trip were left without communication.
The mission should have reached its destination at 3:41 p.m. on Sunday, in Lisbon, according to the countdown, seen in the live transmission made by the Japanese company of the start of the landing process.
The spacecraft began its descent from a height of 100 kilometers above the Moon and was scheduled to land in Atlas, an 87-kilometre crater in the lunar northern hemisphere, and already during the landing process contact was lost.
If the spacecraft had landed, the company would be responsible for the first private project to carry out a successful moon landing.
Only three state projects, from Russia, the United States and China, have so far succeeded in landing on the moon.
In 2019, an Israeli non-profit organization attempted to do so, but the spacecraft was destroyed on impact.
Founded in 2010, Ispace defines itself as a “global company” whose vision is to “expand the planet” and “expand the future”, based on concrete actions such as offering transport services between the Earth and the Moon.
The company has offices in Japan, Luxembourg and the United States, and develops joint projects with the North American space agency (NASA) and the European Space Agency.
Source: TSF
