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Yahoo
2 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Private Japanese spacecraft crashes into moon in 'hard landing,' ispace says
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. A spacecraft from Japan attempting to make the country's first private moon landing on Thursday instead crashed into the lunar surface in a disappointing second failure for its ispace builders. The Japanese company's Resilience spacecraft aimed to make a soft touchdown in the Mare Frigoris ("Sea of Cold") region of the moon's near side today (June 5) at 3:17 p.m. EDT (1917 GMT; 4:17 a.m. on June 6 Japan Standard Time). But telemetry from the lander stopped one minute and 45 seconds before the scheduled touchdown, apparently due to an equipment malfunction. It was reminiscent of ispace's first lunar landing attempt, in April 2023. The spacecraft also went dark during that try, which was eventually declared a failure. "We wanted to make Mission 2 a success but unfortunately we were able to land," ispace founder and CEO Takeshi Hakamada told reporters in a press conference a few hours after the landing try. Preliminary data based on telemetry from Resilience's final moments suggest that the lander's laser rangefinder experienced some sort of delays while measuring the probe's distance to the lunar surface. "As a result, the lander was unable to decelerate sufficiently to reach the required speed for the planned lunar landing," ispace officials wrote in an update. "Based on these circumstances, it is currently assumed that the lander likely performed a hard landing on the lunar surface." 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. "For those who have supported us, we'd really like to apologize," Hakamada said, adding that ispace is committed to learning from its failures for future flights. "We have to continue on our mission to have moon exploration by [the] Japanese." Resilience stood 7.5 feet (2.3 meters) tall and weighs about 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms) when fully fueled. It's the second of ispace's Hakuto-R lunar landers, which explains the name of its current flight: Hakuto-R Mission 2. Hakuto is a white rabbit in Japanese mythology. The ispace folks first used the name for their entry in the Google Lunar X Prize, which offered $20 million to the first private team to soft-land a probe on the moon and have it accomplish some basic exploration tasks. The Prize ended in 2018 without a winner, but ispace carried on with its lunar hardware and ambitions. (The "R" in Hakuto-R stands for "reboot.") The company made big strides on Hakuto-R Mission 1, which successfully reached lunar orbit in March 2023. But that spacecraft couldn't stick the landing; it crashed after its altitude sensor got confused by the rim of a lunar crater, which it mistook for the surrounding lunar surface. ispace folded the lessons learned into Hakuto-R Mission 2, which launched on Jan. 15 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida's Space Coast. That was a moon-mission twofer for SpaceX: Resilience shared the rocket with Blue Ghost, a robotic lander built and operated by the Texas company Firefly Aerospace that carried 10 scientific instruments for NASA via the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Blue Ghost arrived in orbit around the moon on Feb. 13 and landed successfully on March 2, pulling off the second-ever soft lunar touchdown by a private spacecraft. That mission went well from start to finish; the solar-powered Blue Ghost operated on the moon for two weeks as planned, finally going dark on March 16 after the sun set over its landing site. Resilience took a longer, more energy-efficient path to the moon, which featured a close flyby of Earth's nearest neighbor on Feb. 14. The lander arrived in lunar orbit as planned on May 6, then performed a series of maneuvers to shift into a circular path just 62 miles (100 kilometers) above the surface. That set the stage for Thursday's action. Resilience used a series of thruster burns to descend, decelerate and steer its way toward a landing in Mare Frigoris, a vast basaltic plain that lies about 56 degrees north of the lunar equator. But something went wrong when Resilience was just 192 meters above the lunar surface. It's not clear if Resilience was moving faster than expected because of the laser rangefinder data lag, or if that data lag was caused by the probe moving faster than planned, ispace said. "First, we have to figure out the root cause for the phenomenon we observed, and then we have to utilize them into Mission 3 and Mission 4," Hakamada said. If Resilience had succeeded today, it would be just the second soft lunar touchdown for Japan; its national space agency, JAXA, put the SLIM ("Smart Lander for Investigating Moon') spacecraft down safely in January 2024. Today's landing attempt was part of a wave of private lunar exploration, which kicked off with Israel's Beresheet lander mission in 2019. Beresheet failed during its touchdown try, just as ispace's first mission did two years ago. Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic had an abortive go in January 2024 with its Peregrine lunar lander, which suffered a crippling fuel leak shortly after launch and ended up crashing back to Earth. A month later, Houston company Intuitive Machines made history with its Odysseus craft, which touched down near the lunar south pole. Odysseus tipped over shortly after touchdown but continued operating for about a week. Its successor, named Athena, also toppled during its lunar touchdown on March 6 — just four days after Blue Ghost hit the gray dirt — with more serious consequences: The probe went dark within a few short hours. Peregrine, Blue Ghost, Odysseus and Athena all carried NASA science payloads. They were supported by the agency's CLPS program, which aims to gather cost-efficient science data ahead of crewed Artemis moon landings, the first of which is slated for 2027. Resilience carried five payloads, but they don't belong to NASA; Hakuto-R Mission 2 is not a CLPS effort. Three of these five are pieces of science gear that aim to help human exploration of the moon: a deep-space radiation probe developed by National Central University in Taiwan; a technology demonstration from the Japanese company Takasago Thermal Engineering Co. designed to produce hydrogen and oxygen from moon water; and an algae-growing experiment provided by Malaysia-based Euglena Co. (Algae could be an efficient food source for lunar settlers someday.) The other two payloads are a commemorative plate based on the "Charter of the Universal Century" from the Japanese sci-fi franchise Gundam and a tiny rover named Tenacious, which was built by ispace's Luxembourg-based subsidiary. Tenacious was designed to roll down onto the surface and collect a small amount of moon dirt, under a contract that ispace signed with NASA back in 2020. The rover carried a payload of its own — "Moonhouse," a tiny replica of a red-and-white Swedish house designed by artist Mikael Gensberg. The rover was supposed to lower the Moonhouse off its front bumper onto the lunar dirt, establishing a colorful artistic homestead in the stark gray landscape. None of that will come to pass, however, now that ispace has confirmed Resilience slammed into the lunar surfance instead of making a delicate four-point "soft landing." Related stories: — What's flying to the moon on ispace's Resilience lunar lander? — Japan's Resilience moon lander aces lunar flyby ahead of historic touchdown try (photo) — Japan's Resilience moon lander arrives in lunar orbit ahead of June 5 touchdown Despite the failed Resilience landing, ispace has big lunar goals. The company plans to launch two moon missions in 2027, Mission 3 and Mission 4, that will use a larger, more capable lander named Apex 1.0. That lander will weigh 2 tons, much larger than Resilience. "We know it's not going to be easy," ispace director and CFO Jumpei Nozaki said during the press conference. "But it's hard. It has some meaning and significance of trying." Nozaki said he and ispace felt extremely sorry to have disappointed the company's 80,000 supporters and stockholders, and were determined to learn from the experimence in the designs fo Mission 3 and Mission 4. Hakamada, when asked by a reporter if he or the team had cried after the failed landing, said it wasn't a time for crying. "Right now, we don't know the cause, so I can't get emotional and cry," he said. "I don't think that's a good idea. The most important thing is to find out the cause for this second failure." Editor's note: This story, originally posted at 5 p.m. ET, was updated at 9:30 p.m ET with new details from ispace's post landing attempt press conference. Editor-in-Chief Tariq Malik contributed to this report.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Fate of private Japanese moon lander unclear after ispace landing attempt
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The second moon-landing try may not have been the charm for ispace. The Japanese company's Resilience spacecraft aimed to make a soft touchdown in the Mare Frigoris ("Sea of Cold") region of the moon's near side today (June 5) at 3:17 p.m. EDT (1917 GMT; 4:17 a.m. on June 6 Japan Standard Time). But telemetry from the lander stopped coming in about one minute and 45 seconds before the scheduled touchdown, raising doubts about Resilience's fate. It was reminiscent of ispace's first lunar landing attempt, in April 2023. The spacecraft also went dark during that try, which was eventually declared a failure. Resilience stands 7.5 feet (2.3 meters) tall and weighs about 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms) when fully fueled. It's the second of ispace's Hakuto-R lunar landers, which explains the name of its current flight: Hakuto-R Mission 2. Hakuto is a white rabbit in Japanese mythology. The ispace folks first used the name for their entry in the Google Lunar X Prize, which offered $20 million to the first private team to soft-land a probe on the moon and have it accomplish some basic exploration tasks. The Prize ended in 2018 without a winner, but ispace carried on with its lunar hardware and ambitions. (The "R" in Hakuto-R stands for "reboot.") The company made big strides on Hakuto-R Mission 1, which successfully reached lunar orbit in March 2023. But that spacecraft couldn't stick the landing; it crashed after its altitude sensor got confused by the rim of a lunar crater, which it mistook for the surrounding lunar surface. ispace folded the lessons learned into Hakuto-R Mission 2, which launched on Jan. 15 atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida's Space Coast. That was a moon-mission twofer for SpaceX: Resilience shared the rocket with Blue Ghost, a robotic lander built and operated by the Texas company Firefly Aerospace that carried 10 scientific instruments for NASA via the agency's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Blue Ghost arrived in orbit around the moon on Feb. 13 and landed successfully on March 2, pulling off the second-ever soft lunar touchdown by a private spacecraft. That mission went well from start to finish; the solar-powered Blue Ghost operated on the moon for two weeks as planned, finally going dark on March 16 after the sun set over its landing site. Resilience took a longer, more energy-efficient path to the moon, which featured a close flyby of Earth's nearest neighbor on Feb. 14. The lander arrived in lunar orbit as planned on May 6, then performed a series of maneuvers to shift into a circular path just 62 miles (100 kilometers) above the surface. That set the stage for today's action. Resilience used a series of thruster burns to descend, decelerate and steer its way toward a landing in Mare Frigoris, a vast basaltic plain that lies about 56 degrees north of the lunar equator. It's still unclear if that touchdown was a success. ispace ended its webcast today about 20 minutes after the scheduled touchdown time, saying that the mission team was still analyzing data. An update is expected via a press conference a few hours from now, according to the company. If Resilience succeeded today, it would be just the second soft lunar touchdown for Japan; its national space agency, JAXA, put the SLIM ("Smart Lander for Investigating Moon') spacecraft down safely in January 2024. Today's landing attempt was part of a wave of private lunar exploration, which kicked off with Israel's Beresheet lander mission in 2019. Beresheet failed during its touchdown try, just as ispace's first mission did two years ago. Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic had an abortive go in January 2024 with its Peregrine lunar lander, which suffered a crippling fuel leak shortly after launch and ended up crashing back to Earth. A month later, Houston company Intuitive Machines made history with its Odysseus craft, which touched down near the lunar south pole. Odysseus tipped over shortly after touchdown but continued operating for about a week. Its successor, named Athena, also toppled during its lunar touchdown on March 6 — just four days after Blue Ghost hit the gray dirt — with more serious consequences: The probe went dark within a few short hours. Peregrine, Blue Ghost, Odysseus and Athena all carried NASA science payloads. They were supported by the agency's CLPS program, which aims to gather cost-efficient science data ahead of crewed Artemis moon landings, the first of which is slated for 2027. Resilience carries five payloads, but they don't belong to NASA; Hakuto-R Mission 2 is not a CLPS effort. Three of these five are pieces of science gear that aim to help humanity get a foothold on the moon: a deep-space radiation probe developed by National Central University in Taiwan; a technology demonstration from the Japanese company Takasago Thermal Engineering Co. designed to produce hydrogen and oxygen from moon water; and an algae-growing experiment provided by Malaysia-based Euglena Co. (Algae could be an efficient food source for lunar settlers someday.) The other two payloads are a commemorative plate based on the "Charter of the Universal Century" from the Japanese sci-fi franchise Gundam and a tiny rover named Tenacious, which was built by ispace's Luxembourg-based subsidiary. Tenacious was designed to roll down onto the surface and collect a small amount of moon dirt, under a contract that ispace signed with NASA back in 2020. The rover carries a payload of its own — "Moonhouse," a tiny replica of a red-and-white Swedish house designed by artist Mikael Gensberg. If all goes to plan, the rover will lower the Moonhouse off its front bumper onto the lunar dirt, establishing a colorful artistic homestead in the stark gray landscape. Resilience, its payloads and Tenacious were expected to operate for about two weeks, or one lunar day. Like Blue Ghost, Resilience is solar powered and will go dark when the sun disappears over the horizon in Mare Frigoris. It's unclear if any of this will come to pass, however; we'll have to wait for an update from ispace to learn of Resilience's fate. Related stories: — What's flying to the moon on ispace's Resilience lunar lander? — Japan's Resilience moon lander aces lunar flyby ahead of historic touchdown try (photo) — Japan's Resilience moon lander arrives in lunar orbit ahead of June 5 touchdown Whatever happened today — landing success or failure — ispace has big lunar goals. The company plans to launch another moon mission in 2026, which will feature a larger, more capable lander named Apex 1.0. And things will only get more ambitious from there, as ispace works to help humanity get a foothold on the moon. "From Mission 3 and beyond, we will increase the frequency of lunar landings and rover expeditions to transport customer payloads to the moon," the company's website reads. "Our landers will deploy swarms of rovers to the lunar surface to pioneer the discovery and development of lunar resources, enabling the steady development of lunar industry and human presence on the moon."
New York Times
3 days ago
- Business
- New York Times
How to Watch a Japanese Company Try to Land on the Moon's Surface
A Japanese company is hoping that the second time's the charm for putting a robotic lander on the moon. Ispace of Tokyo is among the private companies that have emerged in recent years aiming to establish a profitable business by sending experiments and other payloads to the surface of the moon. Its first spacecraft made it to lunar orbit in 2023, but crashed as it attempted to land. Its second spacecraft, named Resilience, launched in January and has been taking a roundabout path to the moon, entering orbit last month. Resilience is now ready to descend to the lunar surface, and Ispace hopes that it will arrive there intact. When is the moon landing, and how can I watch it? Resilience, also known as the Hakuto-R Mission 2 lander, is scheduled to land at 3:17 p.m. Eastern time Thursday. (It will be Friday at the company's mission control in Tokyo.) Ispace will provide live coverage of the landing beginning at 2:10 p.m. Eastern time. What is Ispace, and what happened during its last moon mission? Ispace emerged from a Japanese team that had aimed to win the Google Lunar X Prize, which offered $20 million for the first privately financed venture to land on the moon. None of the X Prize teams got off the ground before the competition expired in 2018. Takeshi Hakamada, the leader of the Japanese X Prize team, raised private financing to push forward and is the chief executive of Ispace. Do You See Craters or Bumps on the Moon's Surface? A picture taken recently by a Japanese company's spacecraft shows how your interpretation of objective reality can be tested by the power of illusion. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Digital Trends
3 days ago
- Science
- Digital Trends
It's still really hard to land on the moon – can this Japanese company pull it off?
Later today, a Japanese company will be attempting a feat which few have achieved successfully: it will try to gently touch down its Resilience lander on the moon's surface as part of its Hakuto-R Mission 2. Given that humans landed on the moon over 50 years ago, you might assume that moon landings today are easy, but you'd be wrong — as plenty of recent history shows. ispace's previous mission, Hakuto-R Mission 1, was launched in December 2022 but failed its lunar landing in April 2023. That spacecraft did slow to a speed of less than one meter per second and did get into a landing position, but it crashed into the moon's surface due to problems with the spacecraft's altitude measurement. Recommended Videos This time, the company will be hoping for a better result. 'Just over two years ago, on April 26, 2023, ispace, operating Hakuto-R Mission 1, became the first private company in the world to attempt a lunar landing. While the mission achieved significant results, we lost communication with the lander just before touchdown,' said Takeshi Hakamada, CEO of ispace. 'Since that time, we have drawn on the experience, using it as motivation to move forward with resolve. We are now at the dawn of our next attempt to make history.' How landings have gone wrong before The challenges of landing on the moon are many, and it takes just one thing to go wrong for a landing to fail. That's what happened to ispace with its previous landing attempt, which occurred due to the complex topography of the moon's surface. The surface of the moon is covered in craters caused by impacts with meteors and other bodies, some of which are miles wide. While the Earth has experienced similar periodic impacts, on the moon these craters stay present for much longer because there is no atmosphere and no wind to erode them. That means sharp edges, jagged shapes, and steep cliffs. It was one of these cliffs at the rim of the crater which cratered the previous landing. Passing over a cliff nearly two miles deep, the lander's altitude measurement showed a dramatic jump, and its software assumed that this data must be incorrect so it was ignored. The result of this was that the lander thought it was on the surface when it was still 3 miles above it, and so it cut its engines causing it to plummet straight down and crash. This goes to show how tricky the moon can be due to its surface geography. But it isn't just cliffs which can be a problem there. When Intuitive Machines landed its Odysseus lander on the moon in 2024 it made history as the first US spacecraft to land there since the Apollo missions, but it also had landing problems and ended up settling on the surface at a tilted angle. That limited its lifespan as it couldn't collect enough solar power via its panels to keep operations going. In that case, the problem happened when the landing didn't occur in exactly the landing zone which had been planned, but rather at a site around one mile away which had higher elevation. With the wrong elevation data, the leader skidded across the surface, damage its leg, and gently tipped over once it came to a standstill. Intuitive Machines' second attempt at landing with another version of the spacecraft earlier this year was even less successful, as the lander ended up fully on its side and totally unable to collect solar power. Then, it seemed that the lander may have caught a leg on the edge of a crater or on a boulder, causing it to tip over. As well as all the craters on the moon, there are also many loose boulders, some of which are more than 10 meters across. It's extremely hard to detect these kinds of topographical challenges from orbit, as landers have to begin their descent processes far above the moon's surface to give them enough time to slow down so they can set down gently on the surface. They can't detect relatively smaller obstacles like boulders or crater edges until they are closer to the surface, by which time they may not be able to maneuver to avoid them. And finally, there's the fact that the landing procedure needs to be perform with second-time accuracy. The Israeli company SpaceIL had an issue with its Beresheet lander in 2019, when it lost contact with its spacecraft for just a few seconds during landing so a part could be rebooted. That few seconds without contact was enough for the engines to stop firing during the descent, meaning the craft couldn't slow itself quickly enough and smashed hard into the moon's surface. A success story With all these partial or total failures, it's notable that there has been one success when it comes to a private company landing on the moon. Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost mission touched down safely on the moon's surface earlier this year, marking a big check for the company's first landing attempt and allowing the lander to complete a successful two-week mission. That lander made use of technology similar to that NASA uses for its Mars landings, called terrain relative navigation, in which cameras on the underside the spacecraft take images of the surface as it descends. An onboard computer then compares these images to onboard maps to select a safe landing spot, allowing the spacecraft to land itself autonomously. So it can be done, and has been done. But with the moon's tricky surface making every landing a challenge, we'll have to wait and see whether ispace can replicate that success. You can tune into the livestream of the ispace landing in a few hours' time to see how it does.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
A private company wants to build a city on the moon. But it has to land a probe first
A private space exploration company based in Japan, ispace, wants to see people living on the moon by 2040. They have plans to eventually build a city on the lunar surface that would house a thousand people and welcome thousands more for tourist visits. But first, they need to land a probe on the Moon's surface successfully. In April 2023, their first attempt fell short of that goal after they lost communication with their first lander during the mission's final moments. On Thursday at 3:17 p.m. ET, ispace will make its second attempt at an uncrewed moon landing with its lunar lander called Resilience. MORE: NASA releases high-definition images of a sunset on the moon After a nearly five-month journey from the Earth to the moon that began with a January 15 launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9, the lander is scheduled to touch down in an area of the moon known as the "Sea of Cold," part of the Mare Frigoris region. The company said there are three alternative landing sites should conditions change, which would postpone the landing to another date and time. The Resilience is part of ispace's Hakuto-R Mission 2 and is currently orbiting the Moon in preparation for Thursday's landing. If all goes as planned, the spacecraft will fire its main engine and slow itself down in the moon's thin gravity before touching down softly at its landing site. Powered by solar panels, the spacecraft is carrying a mix of commercial and scientific payloads, including a water electrolyzer to test the ability to generate hydrogen and oxygen from lunar water, a food production module for growing algae as a potential food source and a deep-space radiation probe. The mission is expected to last about two weeks. If ispace is going to establish a colony on the moon, it will need to identify an ample supply of ice or water, which it will convert into fuel for a future lunar fueling station. The ability to produce fuel on the moon will enable the company to transport people back and forth between the Earth and the moon. MORE: NASA catches a glimpse of 'city-killer' asteroid before it disappears until 2028 After landing, a small rover called Tenacious will deploy to explore the lunar surface, collect soil samples and transmit HD video and telemetry back to Earth. The rover is also carrying a tiny art installation: a red-painted "Moonhouse" sculpture by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg is mounted to the front of the vehicle. "Our goal is to build the cislunar economy, one in which the Moon and Earth are economically and socially connected. We view the success of the lunar landing as merely a stepping stone toward that goal. We strongly believe that this endeavor and its long-term success will contribute to making life on Earth sustainable for all humanity," ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said in a statement. A private company wants to build a city on the moon. But it has to land a probe first originally appeared on
