Japanese firm declares lunar mission a failure after crash landing
Tokyo-based company ispace said on Friday that its lander, named Resilience, dropped out of lunar orbit as planned and that the mission appeared to be going well.
But flight controllers lost contact with Resilience, which was carrying a mini rover, moments before its scheduled touchdown on the surface of the moon following an hourlong descent. Ground support was met with silence as they attempted to regain contact with the lander and after several hours declared the mission a failure.
The company's livestream of the attempted landing then came to an abrupt end.
'We have to take seriously what happened,' ispace CEO and founder Takeshi Hakamada said after the failed mission, as he apologised to everyone who contributed.
This is the firm's second failed attempt to soft land on the lunar surface, coming two years after the Japanese start-up's first attempt to reach the moon ended in a crash landing.
Launched in December 2022, the firm's Hakuto-R Mission 1 reached lunar orbit but crashed during its final descent after an error caused the lander to believe it was lower than it actually was.
That mission's successor, Resilience, was launched in January from Florida on a long, roundabout journey. It shared a ride on a SpaceX rocket with Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost, which, upon reaching the moon first in March this year, made the US firm the first private entity to make a 'fully successful' soft landing there.
The 2.3-metre (7.5-foot) Resilience lander was targeting the top of the moon, where the ispace team had chosen a flat area with few boulders in Mare Frigoris, or Sea of Cold, to land.
Resilience was expected to beam back pictures within hours of landing, before ispace's European-built rover – named Tenacious – would have been lowered onto the lunar surface this weekend. The rover, made of carbon fibre-reinforced plastic and sporting a high-definition camera, would then have scouted out the area and scooped up lunar dirt for NASA.
Resilience was also carrying a toy-sized red house created by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg. Moonhouse, as the model Swedish-style cottage was called, was intended to be the moon's first 'building', in a nod to Hakamada's vision of humans living and working there as early as the 2040s.
But ispace's now second failed landing has left the Japanese entrepreneur's vision in doubt. The aerospace company's next, much bigger lander is scheduled to launch by 2027 with NASA's involvement.
Prior to Friday's failed mission, the Japanese firm's chief financial officer, Jumpei Nozaki, promised to continue its lunar quest regardless of the outcome.
But Jeremy Fix, chief engineer for ispace's US subsidiary, said at a conference last month that the firm does not have 'infinite funds' and cannot afford repeated failures.
Company officials said this latest failed mission cost less than the first one – which exceeded $100m – but declined to provide an exact figure.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Al Jazeera
9 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
As Trump splits from India, is the US abandoning its pivot to Asia?
New Delhi, India – When United States President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin meet in Alaska on Friday, their summit will be followed closely not only in both those countries, Europe and Ukraine – but also more than 10,000km (6,200 miles) away, in New Delhi. Since the end of the Cold War, India has juggled a historically strong relationship with Russia and rapidly blossoming ties with the US. New Delhi's relations with Washington grew particularly strong under the presidencies of George W Bush and Barack Obama, and remained that way during Trump's first term and under Joe Biden. At the heart of that US warmth towards India, say analysts, was its bet on New Delhi as a balancing force against Beijing, as China's economic, military and strategic heft in the Asia Pacific region grew. With Soviet communism history, and China, the US's biggest strategic rival, Washington increased its focus on Asia – including through the Quad, a grouping also including fellow democracies India, Australia and Japan. But a decade after Obama famously described the US and India as 'best partners', they appear to be anything but. Trump has imposed a 50 percent tariff on Indian imports, among the highest on any country's products. Half of that penalty is for India's purchases of Russian oil during its ongoing war with Ukraine – something that the Biden administration encouraged India to do to keep global crude prices under control. Meanwhile, China – which buys even more Russian oil than India – has received a reprieve from high US tariffs for now, as Washington negotiates a trade deal with New Delhi. That contrast has prompted questions over whether Trump's approach towards China, on the one hand, and traditional friends like India on the other, marks a broader shift away from the US pivot to Asia. Troubles for India, and Modi Since the early 2000s, successive governments in New Delhi have embraced closer ties with Washington, with its stocks rising in the US as an emerging strategic partner in security, trade and technology. Trump made that relationship personal – with Modi. During Trump's first term, he shared the stage twice in public rallies with Modi, as they also exchanged frequent bear hugs and described each other as friends. But none of that could save New Delhi when Trump hit India with tariffs only matched by the levies issued against goods from Brazil. 'The tariff moves have triggered the most serious rupture in the US-India relations in decades,' said Milan Vaishnav, the director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. For months after Trump threatened tariffs on Indian imports, New Delhi tried to placate the US president, refusing to get drawn into a war of words. That has now changed, with India accusing the US of hypocrisy – pointing out that it still trades with Russia, and that Washington had previously wanted New Delhi to buy Russian crude. 'One thing is clear: Trust in the United States has eroded sharply in recent days, casting a long shadow over the bilateral relationship,' Vaishnav told Al Jazeera. To Praveen Donthi, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, the crisis in the relationship also reflects a dramatic turn in the personal equation between Modi and Trump. The state of ties, he said, is 'a result of a clash of personalities between President Trump and Prime Minister Modi'. India has previously faced the threat of US sanctions for its close friendship with Russia, when it decided to buy S-400 missile defence systems from Moscow. But in 2022, under the Biden administration, it secured a waiver from those proposed sanctions. 'Not long ago, India could avoid sanctions despite purchasing S-400 weapon systems from Russia. However, now, India's policy of multi-alignment clashes with President Trump's transactional approach to geopolitics,' said Donthi. To be sure, he pointed out, America's Cold War history of bonhomie with Pakistan has meant that 'a certain distrust of the US is embedded in the Indian strategic firmament'. The Trump administration's recent cosiness with Pakistan, with its army chief visiting the US this year, even getting a rare meeting with the president at the White House, will likely have amplified those concerns in New Delhi. But through ups and downs in India-US ties over the years, a key strategic glue has held them close over the past quarter century: shared worries about the rise of China. 'A certain bipartisan consensus existed in the US regarding India because of its long-term strategic importance, especially in balancing China,' said Donthi. Now, he said, 'the unpredictable Trump presidency disrupted the US's approach of 'strategic altruism' towards India'. It is no longer clear to Asian partners of the US, say experts, whether Washington is as focused on building alliances in their region as it once said it was. Turn from Asia Under the Obama administration in 2011, the US adopted what was known as the 'Rebalance to Asia' policy, aimed at committing more diplomatic, economic and military resources to the Asia Pacific region, increasingly seen as the world's economic and geopolitical centre of gravity. This meant deeper engagement with treaty allies like Japan, South Korea, and Australia, strengthening security ties with emerging partners such as India and Vietnam, and pushing forward trade initiatives like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The idea was to shape a regional order that could balance China's rise. During Trump's first term, the economic leg that gave the pivot its weight hollowed out. The US withdrawal from the TPP in early 2017 removed the signature trade pillar, leaving behind a strategy that leaned heavily on military cooperation and less on binding economic partnerships. Yet, he refrained from the bulldozing negotiations that have shaped his approach to tariffs, even with allies like Japan and South Korea, and from the kind of tariffs Trump has imposed now on India. 'There is currently a period of churn and uncertainty, after which clarity will emerge,' Donthi said. 'There might be some cautious rebalancing in the short term from the Asian powers, who will wait for more clarity.' India, which, unlike Japan and South Korea, has never been a treaty ally to the US – or any other country – might already be taking steps towards that rebalancing. Russia-India-China troika? Faced with Trump's tariff wrath, India has been engaged in hectic diplomacy of its own. Its national security adviser, Ajit Doval, visited Moscow earlier this month and met Putin. Foreign Minister S Jaishankar is scheduled to travel to the Russian capital later this month. Also in August, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is expected to visit New Delhi. And at the end of the month, Modi will travel to China for a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, his first trip to the country in seven years. India has also indicated that it is open to considering the revival of a Russia-India-China (RIC) trilateral mechanism, after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov proposed the platform's resurrection. The concept of trilateral cooperation was first proposed in the 1990s and formally institutionalised in 2002, an idea Lavrov credited to the late Yevgeny Primakov, former chair of the Russian International Affairs Council. Although the RIC met regularly in the years following its creation, there has been a gap in recent times, with the last meeting of RIC leaders in 2019, on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan. India's Modi faces some 'very difficult choices', said Michael Kugelman, a senior fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation. 'Clearly, India is not going to turn on Russia, a very special partner. And India does not turn on its friends.' But doubling down on its strategic independence from the US – or multi-alignment, as India describes it – could come with its costs, if Trump decides to add on even more tariffs or sanctions. 'The best outcome for India immediately is the Russians and Ukrainians agree to a ceasefire,' said Kugelman, 'because at the end of the day, Trump is pressuring India as a means of pressuring Russia.' Even as questions rise over Washington's pivot to Asia under Trump, such a rebalance will not be easy for countries like India, say experts. Ultimately, they say, the US will find its longtime partners willing to return to the fold if it decides to reinvest in those relationships. The cost of a rebalance An RIC troika would ultimately be 'more symbolic than substantive', Kugelman said. That's because one of the sides of that triangle is 'quite small and fragile: India-China ties'. While there have been 'notable easing of tensions' in recent months, 'India and China remain strategic competitors,' added Kugelman. After four years of an eyeball-to-eyeball standoff along their Himalayan border, they finally agreed to withdraw troops last year, with Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping meeting in Kazan. But 'they continue to have a long disputed border', Kugelman said, and trust between the Asian giants remains low. Vaishnav of the Carnegie Endowment agreed. 'There may be opportunistic venues and moments where the countries' interests converge. But I think, beyond defence and energy, Russia has little to offer India,' he said. 'With China, while we may see a thaw in economic relations, it's difficult to see a path to resolving broader security and geostrategic disputes.' Jon Danilowicz, a retired diplomat who worked in the US State Department, said that a total breakdown of the US-India partnership is in neither's interest. 'The cooperation in other areas will continue, perhaps with less open enthusiasm than had been the case in recent years,' he said. Meanwhile, the Trump tariffs could help Modi domestically. 'Trump's hardball tactics could bolster Modi's domestic standing. They highlight Washington's unreliability, allowing Modi to frame himself as standing firm in the face of the US pressure,' said Vaishnav. Modi had been facing pressure from the opposition over the ceasefire with Pakistan after four days of military hostilities in May, after 26 civilians were killed in an attack by gunmen in Kashmir in April. The opposition has accused Modi of not going harder and longer at Pakistan because of pressure from Trump, who has claimed repeatedly that he brokered the ceasefire between New Delhi and Islamabad – a claim India has denied. 'Any further appearance of yielding – this time to the US – could be politically costly. Resisting Trump reinforces Modi's image as a defender of national pride,' added Vaishnav. Many analysts have said they see Trump's tariffs also as the outcome of as-yet unsuccessful India-US trade talks, with New Delhi reluctant to open up the country's agriculture and dairy sectors that are politically sensitive for the Indian government. Almost half of India's population depends on farming for its livelihood. Modi has in recent days said that he won't let the interests of Indian farmers suffer, 'even though I know I will have to pay a personal cost'. 'He is demonstrating defiance to the domestic electorate,' said Donthi, of the International Crisis Group. Ultimately, though, he said, both India and the US would benefit if they strike a compromise that allows them to stop the slide in ties. 'But the warmth and friendliness won't be present, and this will be evident for some time,' Donthi said.
Al Jazeera
2 days ago
- Al Jazeera
Japan's Nikkei 225 hits all-time high after US inflation remains steady
Japan's benchmark stock market index has topped its all-time high for a second straight day amid expectations of an interest rate cut in the United States and easing trade tensions between Washington and Beijing. The Nikkei 225 rose above 43,421 points on Wednesday after better-than-expected US inflation data bolstered the case for a rate cut by the US Federal Reserve at its next committee meeting in September. The milestone came after the Nikkei on Tuesday breached the 42,999-point mark for the first time. In the US, the benchmark S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite also closed at record highs on Tuesday after rising 1.13 percent and 1.39 percent respectively, as investors cheered the latest inflation data release, which showed consumer prices rising a lower-than-expected 2.7 percent in July. The positive inflation data added to a positive turn in investor sentiment following US President Donald Trump's announcement on Monday of a 90-day extension of his pause on crippling tariffs on Chinese goods. Other Asian stock markets also racked up big gains on Wednesday, with Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index rising and South Korea's KOSPI rising about 2.40 percent and 1 percent respectively, in afternoon trading. The Fed and its chair, Jerome Powell, have for months been under intense pressure from US President Donald Trump to lower interest rates. A cut in the benchmark rate would deliver a boost to the US economy, the biggest driver of global growth, by lowering borrowing costs for American households and businesses. But the Fed has been reluctant to cut the rate due to concerns it could stoke inflation at a time when Trump's sweeping tariffs are already putting pressure on prices. 'Jerome 'Too Late' Powell must NOW lower the rate,' Trump said in a post on Truth Social on Tuesday, claiming that the Fed chair had done 'incalculable' damage to the economy by not lowering borrowing costs. On Tuesday, CME Group's FedWatch tool raised the likelihood of a September rate cut to 96.4 percent, up from 85.9 percent the previous day.
Qatar Tribune
3 days ago
- Qatar Tribune
China's workers face unpaid leave and lower wages amid economic squeeze
Agencies Mike Chai intends to reduce wage costs at his kitchen cabinet factory by about 30% to remain competitive against other Chinese companies, many of which have ceased selling to the U.S. due to steep tariffs and are now targeting his long-time customers in Australia. Chai had already halved his workforce to 100 people since the COVID-19 pandemic and says he has no more room to trim. Instead, he is shortening shifts and asking workers to take unpaid leave – an increasingly common practice that has become a hidden deflationary force in the world's second-largest economy. 'We're in survival mode,' said the 53-year-old, adding that his company, Cartia Global Manufacturing, in the southern city of Foshan, 'barely breaks even.' 'I told them, you don't want our factory to go broke. You've worked here for 10-15 years, let's do it together.' China's headline unemployment rate has held around 5% as U.S. President Donald Trump raised tariffs on imports from China by 30 percentage points this year. Washington and Beijing extended on Monday a tariff truce for another 90 days, during which tariffs will remain at the levels reached in economists argue that underemployment – which, like other economies, is not tracked in data – is worsening due to higher levies and industrial overcapacity, thereby squeezing workers' incomes, undermining their confidence in the future, and prompting them to spend less. Consumer confidence lingers near record lows, retail sales have weakened and inflation in July was zero. Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief Asia-Pacific economist at Natixis, says it is China's manufacturing workers who suffer while exports – and the economy – keep growing despite the U.S. tariffs. 'It's the people who are hammered by this model of huge competition, lower prices, thus you need to lower costs, thus you need to lower wages. It's a spiral,' she said. 'The model is crazy. I'm sorry, but if you need to export at a loss, do not export.' Statistics will not reveal Chinese workers as 'the main losers' in the trade war because 'they will not become unemployed, but they will get unpaid leave of absence or work fewer hours,' she added. Chai has already lost two key customers in his main market of Australia after other Chinese firms cut their prices and his factory is operating at half-capacity. 'All those who have left America have come to Australia,' he said. 'A lot of new supply is knocking on my customers' doors.' While Chinese exports to the U.S. dropped 21.7% year-on-year in July, they rose by 9.2% to the European Union, 16.6% to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and 14.8% to Australia. Chai plans to cut prices by about 10%. To afford that, he is also cutting overtime, which previously made up more than a third of workers' income, from 28 days per month in total to about 10. On average, his workers earn 5,000 yuan ($697) a month before bosses are also turning to temporary workers, hiring them for new orders and dismissing them when demand dries up. Dave Fong, who co-owns three factories in southern China making everything from school bags to climbing gear and industrial machinery, says he laid off 30 full-time workers at one of the plants, then rehired some of them temporarily to fulfil unexpected orders. 'We prefer temporary contracts so we don't need to pay pension or insurance,' said Fong. 'It's by day or by hour.' 'If we don't do that, the company hits a dead end. The market is weak because consumption power has decreased. Another factor is trade, especially with the U.S.' Temporary work is common in China, especially among its nearly 300 million rural migrants. Chen Chuyan, a recruiting agent in the central city of Wuhan, says the going rate has dropped to 14 yuan per hour from 16 yuan last year. 'There's a long line of people waiting for job interviews every day, but the factories don't have that much demand,' Chen said. Alan Zhang has taken such jobs in Datang village, a cluster of small garment factories in the southern city of Guangzhou, since 2021. Back then, he earned 400 yuan a day, but now he struggles to find work paying even half that amount. 'If it's just a couple hundred yuan, I won't take it,' said the 30-year-old, after scanning handwritten ads for temporary work held by recruiters lounging on scooters. 'I don't know what happened. Suddenly, it got tough to find anything. Prices dropped fast,' said Zhang, who pays 700 yuan per month to rent a studio flat in Datang with his wife, who also works in clothing factories. He worked just 14 days in July, which worries him because he must raise 10,000 yuan every year for his son's kindergarten fees. The boy lives with his grandparents in Zhang's hometown, located in neighboring Fujian Province. 'If manufacturing wages are being squeezed, then the wider economy would feel deflationary pressure,' said Richard Yarrow, a fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. 'This is definitely a growing issue for some of the lower-skill types of manufacturing in China, such as textiles, furniture and simple electronics.' At the Longhua employment market in Shenzhen's tech hub, dozens of people browsed bulletin boards for electronics factory jobs that pay 17-28 yuan per hour. Mo, 26, who holds a degree in digital marketing but has been unable to find a job in the field, had already had two interviews by early afternoon. He declined the offers because the terms were not as advertised. 'They'll say 23 yuan, but actually give you 20,' said Mo, only giving his surname for privacy reasons. 'Then they'll take management fees, housing, cleaning and whatever else they can deduct.' Huang, 46, was checking the market for a fifth straight day, having arrived by bus from the southwestern province of Yunnan. He managed real estate projects before the property market crash. Now he is divorced and lives on a diet of 10 yuan meals, paying 25 yuan per night for a bed in a dormitory. He cannot afford anything else until he finds work. 'I had one interview this morning, but they asked for an upfront placement fee of 80 yuan,' said Huang, dragging a small suitcase. 'So I didn't go. I bought some food instead.'
