The first private moon landing is still a long time coming. The attempt by the young Japanese space company ispace to place a space probe on the moon in a controlled manner has apparently failed, as the company announced.
Shortly after the targeted landing time on Wednesday night, no more data was received that would have confirmed a successful landing of “Hakuto-R”.
The communication to the flight control center in Tokyo was broken off, it said. The probability is high that the lander finally fell uncontrolled onto the moon. Nothing was initially known about the condition of the probe and its charge. “Hakuto” means “white rabbit” in Japanese, which lived on the moon in Japanese mythology.
ispace had advertised its “Hakuto-R-Mission 1” under the motto “Let’s go to the Moon”. If successful, it would have been the world’s first privately financed company to safely launch a lander for exploration on the Earth’s satellite. So far, only government programs have succeeded. Other private lunar missions had also failed.
ispace indicates reason for crash
It was initially unclear why the probe did not land as planned. The company’s technicians are currently evaluating data, said ispace. This involves the transmission of measured values ??between the lander and the control center. ispace indicated that the probe may have run out of fuel.
It can be assumed that the probe did not reach the ninth of a total of ten planned “stages” of the flight and thus the end of the landing in the Atlas crater on the southeastern edge of Mare Frigoris (“Sea of ??Cold”), it said. According to company boss Takeshi Hakamada, there was still contact with the unmanned spacecraft shortly before the end of the landing phase. After that, the communication was broken off.
Hakamada followed the landing phase with his team in the control center. The situation in the room was broadcast by ispace on its YouTube channel. The tension could be seen on the faces of the staff present.
More private missions planned
Although it did not achieve its goal, the company did not count the mission as a complete failure. “We think we have fully fulfilled the meaning of this mission as we have been able to collect a lot of data and experience by being able to carry out the landing phase,” Hakamada said. Mission 2 and 3 are already being planned for 2024 and 2025. Two American competitors, the companies Astrobotic and Intuitive Machines, want to try their hand at a private moon landing much earlier.
In the run-up to the ispace mission, economists saw a “strong signal” and an “ignition” for global space travel business. One goal of the company is the commercial transport of goods to the surface of the moon. The probe, which is 2.3 meters high and 2.6 meters wide with the landing legs extended, had a small rover from the United Arab Emirates and an even smaller two-wheeled robot on board for the current mission. It was developed by the Japanese state space agency Jaxa and the Japanese toy manufacturer Tomy.
A rocket from the US space company SpaceX launched “Hakuto-R” in December.
