Japanese spacecraft crashes into moon in 'hard landing,' says ispace

Mint

18 hours ago

A private Japanese spacecraft crashed while attempting a touchdown on the Moon on Friday. The Tokyo-based company ispace declared the mission a failure several hours after communication was lost with the lander. This was ispace's second lunar landing attempt.
The RESILIENCE lunar lander had begun a landing sequence in an attempt to make a soft touchdown in the Mare Frigoris ("Sea of Cold") region of the moon's northern hemisphere on June 6, 2025 (JST).
Following the landing sequence, the Mission Control Center was unable to establish communications with the RESILIENCE lunar lander.
In a statement posted on X, ispace said, "As of 8:00 a.m. [local time] on June 6, 2025, mission controllers have determined that it is unlikely that communication with the lander will be restored and therefore completing Success 9 is not achievable. It has been decided to conclude the mission."
'Given that there is currently no prospect of a successful lunar landing,' Takeshi Hakamada, Founder and CEO of ispace, said its 'top priority is to swiftly analyse the telemetry data we have obtained thus far and work diligently to identify the cause.'
Ispace engineers at the HAKUTO-R Mission Control Centre in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, transmitted commands to execute the landing sequence at 3:13 am on June 6, 2025.
The RESILIENCE lander then began the descent phase.
The lander descended from an altitude of approximately 100 km to approximately 20 km, and then successfully fired its main engine as planned to begin deceleration.
According to reports, communications ceased less than two minutes before the spacecraft's scheduled landing on the moon with a mini rover.
"No data indicating a successful landing was received, even after the scheduled landing time had passed," the company added.
A preliminary analysis indicated that the laser system for measuring the altitude did not work as planned, and the lander descended too fast, officials said.
"Based on these circumstances, it is currently assumed that the lander likely performed a hard landing on the lunar surface,' the company said in a written statement.
A 'hard landing' means Resilience hit the moon's surface faster than planned. It's unlikely it survived in any condition to proceed with its two-week mission, or deploy the small Tenacious rover built by the European Space Agency, Space.com reported.
The mission had aimed to collect two lunar soil samples and sell them to NASA for $5,000.
Though the samples would remain on the Moon, the symbolic transaction is meant to strengthen the US stance that commercial activity -- though not sovereign claims -- should be allowed on celestial bodies.
To date, only five nations have achieved soft lunar landings: the Soviet Union, the United States, China, India, and Japan.
On board the lander were several high-profile payloads: Tenacious, a Luxembourg-built micro rover; a water electrolyzer to split molecules into hydrogen and oxygen; a food production experiment; and a deep-space radiation probe.
The rover also carried "Moonhouse," a model home designed by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg
Two years ago, the company's first moonshot ended in a crash landing, giving rise to the name 'Resilience' for its successor lander.
'This is the second time that we were not able to land. So we really have to take it very seriously," Hakamadawas quote dby PTI as saying. He stressed that the company would press ahead with more lunar missions.
Resilience carried a rover with a shovel to gather lunar dirt as well as a Swedish artist's toy-size red house for placement on the moon's dusty surface.