Latest news with #JumpeiNozaki
The Sun
4 days ago
- Business
- The Sun
Japan's ispace fails again: Resilience lander crashes on moon
TOKYO: Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the lunar surface during its touchdown attempt on Friday, marking another failure two years after an unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join U.S. firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace in making successful commercial moon landings amid a global race that includes state-run lunar missions from China and India. Although the failure means another multi-year pause in Japan's commercial access to the moon, the country remains committed to the U.S.-led Artemis program and a wide range of Japanese companies are studying lunar exploration as a business frontier. Resilience, ispace's second lunar lander, had problems measuring its distance to the surface and could not slow its descent fast enough, the company said, adding it has not been able to communicate with Resilience after a likely hard landing. 'Truly diverse scenarios were possible, including issues with the propulsion system, software or hardware, especially with sensors,' ispace Chief Technology Officer Ryo Ujiie told a press conference. A room of more than 500 ispace employees, shareholders, sponsors and government officials abruptly grew silent when flight data was lost less than two minutes before the scheduled touchdown time during a public viewing event at mission partner Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp in the wee hours in Tokyo. Shares of ispace were untraded, overwhelmed by sell orders, and looked set to close at the daily limit-low, which would mark a 29% fall. As of the close of Thursday, ispace had a market capitalisation of more than 110 billion yen ($766 million). 'We're not facing any immediate financial deterioration or distress because of the event,' CFO Jumpei Nozaki said in the press conference, citing recurring investor support. In 2023, ispace's first lander crashed into the moon's surface due to inaccurate recognition of its altitude. Software remedies have been implemented, while the hardware design was mostly unchanged in Resilience. $16 MILLION PAYLOAD Resilience was carrying a four-wheeled rover built by ispace's Luxembourg subsidiary and five external payloads worth a total of $16 million, including scientific instruments from Japanese firms and a Taiwanese university. The lander had targeted Mare Frigoris, a basaltic plain about 900 km (560 miles) from the moon's north pole. If the landing had been successful, the 2.3-metre-high lander and the rover would have begun 14 days of planned exploration activities, including capturing of regolith, the moon's fine-grained surface material, on a contract with U.S. space agency NASA. Resilience in January shared a SpaceX rocket launch with Firefly's Blue Ghost lander, which took a faster trajectory to the moon and touched down successfully in March. Intuitive Machines, which last year marked the world's first commercial lunar touchdown, also landed its second Athena lander in March, although in a toppled position just as with its first mission. Japan last year became the world's fifth country to achieve a soft lunar landing after the former Soviet Union, the United States, China and India, when the national Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency achieved the touchdown of its SLIM lander. The government last year signed an agreement with NASA to include Japanese astronauts in Artemis lunar missions and has supported private companies' research projects for future lunar development, assuming ispace's transportation capabilities. 'Expectations for ispace have not faded,' Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said in an X post. Although ispace will likely remain Japan's most advanced lunar transportation company, some Japanese firms may start to consider transport options from foreign entities to test their lunar exploration visions, said Ritsumeikan University professor Kazuto Saiki, who was involved in the SLIM mission. For its third mission in 2027, ispace's U.S. unit is building a bigger lander as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services for the Artemis program. The company projects six more missions in the U.S. and Japan through 2029. 'NASA increasingly needs private companies to improve cost efficiency for key missions with limited budgets,' ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said, referring to U.S. President Donald Trump's proposed budget cuts. 'To meet NASA's expectations, we'll support our U.S. subsidiary to keep up with development and play a role.' ($1 = 143.5600 yen)
The Sun
4 days ago
- Business
- The Sun
Japan's ispace moon lander likely crashed during landing
TOKYO: Japanese company ispace said its uncrewed moon lander likely crashed onto the lunar surface during its touchdown attempt on Friday, marking another failure two years after an unsuccessful inaugural mission. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join U.S. firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace in making successful commercial moon landings amid a global race that includes state-run lunar missions from China and India. Although the failure means another multi-year pause in Japan's commercial access to the moon, the country remains committed to the U.S.-led Artemis program and a wide range of Japanese companies are studying lunar exploration as a business frontier. Resilience, ispace's second lunar lander, had problems measuring its distance to the surface and could not slow its descent fast enough, the company said, adding it has not been able to communicate with Resilience after a likely hard landing. 'Truly diverse scenarios were possible, including issues with the propulsion system, software or hardware, especially with sensors,' ispace Chief Technology Officer Ryo Ujiie told a press conference. A room of more than 500 ispace employees, shareholders, sponsors and government officials abruptly grew silent when flight data was lost less than two minutes before the scheduled touchdown time during a public viewing event at mission partner Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp in the wee hours in Tokyo. Shares of ispace were untraded, overwhelmed by sell orders, and looked set to close at the daily limit-low, which would mark a 29% fall. As of the close of Thursday, ispace had a market capitalisation of more than 110 billion yen ($766 million). 'We're not facing any immediate financial deterioration or distress because of the event,' CFO Jumpei Nozaki said in the press conference, citing recurring investor support. In 2023, ispace's first lander crashed into the moon's surface due to inaccurate recognition of its altitude. Software remedies have been implemented, while the hardware design was mostly unchanged in Resilience. $16 MILLION PAYLOAD Resilience was carrying a four-wheeled rover built by ispace's Luxembourg subsidiary and five external payloads worth a total of $16 million, including scientific instruments from Japanese firms and a Taiwanese university. The lander had targeted Mare Frigoris, a basaltic plain about 900 km (560 miles) from the moon's north pole. If the landing had been successful, the 2.3-metre-high lander and the rover would have begun 14 days of planned exploration activities, including capturing of regolith, the moon's fine-grained surface material, on a contract with U.S. space agency NASA. Resilience in January shared a SpaceX rocket launch with Firefly's Blue Ghost lander, which took a faster trajectory to the moon and touched down successfully in March. Intuitive Machines, which last year marked the world's first commercial lunar touchdown, also landed its second Athena lander in March, although in a toppled position just as with its first mission. Japan last year became the world's fifth country to achieve a soft lunar landing after the former Soviet Union, the United States, China and India, when the national Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency achieved the touchdown of its SLIM lander. The government last year signed an agreement with NASA to include Japanese astronauts in Artemis lunar missions and has supported private companies' research projects for future lunar development, assuming ispace's transportation capabilities. 'Expectations for ispace have not faded,' Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said in an X post. Although ispace will likely remain Japan's most advanced lunar transportation company, some Japanese firms may start to consider transport options from foreign entities to test their lunar exploration visions, said Ritsumeikan University professor Kazuto Saiki, who was involved in the SLIM mission. For its third mission in 2027, ispace's U.S. unit is building a bigger lander as part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services for the Artemis program. The company projects six more missions in the U.S. and Japan through 2029. 'NASA increasingly needs private companies to improve cost efficiency for key missions with limited budgets,' ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said, referring to U.S. President Donald Trump's proposed budget cuts. 'To meet NASA's expectations, we'll support our U.S. subsidiary to keep up with development and play a role.' ($1 = 143.5600 yen)
The Sun
4 days ago
- Business
- The Sun
Japan's moon lander ‘crashes AGAIN' in second botched mission as spaceship goes silent just moments before touchdown
A JAPANESE spacecraft attempting a touchdown on the moon has crashed into the surface, the space company said. The unmanned Resilience Moon Lander, from private Japanese astro company ispace, has been declared a failure for a second time. 2 2 Friday's flop follows the failure of the company's first attempt at a moon landing in 2023. Resilience had difficulty measuring the distance between itself and the moon, its makers said, so it careered into the surface going too fast. Following the disappointment, CFO Jumpei Nozaki said: "We're not facing any immediate financial deterioration or distress because of the event." Ispace will now have to wait years before taking another shot at a lunar landing. However, the country remains committed to the mission - and a number of private companies there are looking at moon exploration as a business opportunity. Tokyo-based ispace had hoped to join US firms Intuitive Machines and Firefly Aerospace in making successful commercial moon landings. It comes amid a global race that includes state-run lunar missions from China and India. .
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
A Japan-based company will attempt to land on the moon. Here's why its lander spent months, not days, in space
Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. Nearly five months ago, a SpaceX rocket launched out of Florida carrying two lunar landers. The Blue Ghost spacecraft, from Texas-based Firefly Aerospace, zoomed to the moon, and in March it became the first robotic commercial vehicle to land upright on the lunar surface. The other spacecraft, developed by Japan-based company Ispace, is just now arriving at its destination. Resilience, as the uncrewed lunar lander is called, is on track to make its touchdown attempt at 3:24 p.m. ET on Thursday — three months after its rideshare buddy made history. Ispace isn't too concerned about losing out on a 'first' superlative. And company executives said that taking a slow and steady path to the moon can offer Ispace some long-term advantages. 'What is good about this four- or five-month trajectory is, every day, there are small things that happen … something we didn't expect,' Ispace Chief Financial Officer Jumpei Nozaki told CNN in January. 'This (journey to the moon) is really a learning phase.' Three teams of Ispace employees have been rotating in and out of the company's mission control room in Tokyo, racking up months' worth of practice in overseeing the unpredictable and daring physics of deep-space travel — a rare opportunity, the company's founder and CEO, Takeshi Hakamada, told CNN. Such a gradual approach to the moon does not, however, guarantee landing success. Ispace's first attempt to put a spacecraft on the lunar surface ended with a crash landing in April 2023 after a 4 ½-month journey from Earth. Ultimately, Resilience's long trajectory offers Ispace both pros and cons. Resilience is on a path to the moon that's often referred to as a low-energy transfer. It's essentially a slow, cruising route — much like traveling to a friend's house on a bike and coasting on the downhills, using little fuel or energy. On such a path, the Resilience lander travels for hundreds of thousands of miles, soaring into deep space and waiting for the moon's gravity to naturally capture the spacecraft into lunar orbit. In contrast, other vehicles such as Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost and the Nova-C lander, developed by Texas-based company Intuitive Machines, have used large engines to fire themselves on a much more direct path. Intuitive Machines' latest Nova-C lander, for example, reached the moon about a week after takeoff. Compared with lunar landers developed by Ispace's competitors, Resilience is lightweight and relatively cheap with a smaller rocket engine. All the time Resilience spends in orbit allows mission operators to 'verify many kinds of systems during this long journey,' such as the vehicle's sensors, navigation and other software systems, Nozaki said. But there are downsides, too. And Nozaki said that, no matter the outcome of Resilience's trip, Ispace will abandon the low-energy transfer approach with its third mission. Ispace's upcoming lunar lander, called Apex 1.0, will be flown in partnership with Massachusetts-based company Draper, under CLPS for the Artemis program, with the aim of taking a more direct route to the moon. Reaching the moon quickly is also 'really important for our customers,' Nozaki said. These clients include research groups, companies and governments that pay Ispace to fly cargo such as science instruments on board the lunar lander. Spending months in transit can put extra wear on instruments as they are exposed to the intense radiation environment and wild temperature swings of space before they begin operating on the lunar surface, according to Ispace. Still, the company is hopeful a group of three science instruments currently on board Resilience will carry out exciting tests after the vehicle reaches the moon on Thursday. Resilience is carrying a module designed to test algae-based food production, a deep-space radiation monitor and a water electrolyzer experiment, which is a device that aims to generate hydrogen and oxygen in the lunar environment. Ispace's first lunar lander was descending toward the Atlas crater, a feature on the northeast side of the moon's near face, when it crashed in April 2023. This go-around, the company is aiming to land in a different lunar location: a 750-mile-long (1,200-kilometer) plain called Mare Frigoris — or the 'Sea of Cold' — which lies in the moon's far northern reaches. Mare Frigoris is significantly flatter than the Atlas crater region, potentially offering easier-to-navigate terrain. Ispace said in a statement that the new landing site was chosen because it offers 'flexibility.' The company plans to livestream Thursday's touchdown attempt on YouTube and X. If Resilience lands upright, Ispace will become the first commercial company outside of the US to pull off such a feat. Ispace would also join Firefly, whose Blue Ghost lander made a pristine landing in March, in becoming the only two companies to complete a fully successful touchdown of a robotic lunar lander. Intuitive Machines has landed two vehicles on the moon, both in the vicinity of the lunar south pole. Each of those spacecraft landed on its side, however, limiting the science and research the company could carry out. Both Firefly Aerospace and Intuitive Machines are contractors for NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, initiative, which is part of the space agency's Artemis program — a framework under which NASA plans to return humans to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years. Robotic missions carried out under CLPS are meant to serve as scientific pathfinders, paving the way for astronauts' return.
CNN
6 days ago
- Business
- CNN
A Japan-based firm will attempt to land on the moon. Here's why its lander spent months, not days, in space
Nearly five months ago, a SpaceX rocket launched out of Florida carrying two lunar landers. The Blue Ghost spacecraft, from Texas-based Firefly Aerospace, zoomed to the moon, and in March it became the first robotic commercial vehicle to land upright on the lunar surface. The other spacecraft, developed by Japan-based company Ispace, is just now arriving at its destination. Resilience, as the uncrewed lunar lander is called, is on track to make its touchdown attempt at 3:24 p.m. ET on Thursday — three months after its rideshare buddy made history. Ispace isn't too concerned about losing out on a 'first' superlative. And company executives said that taking a slow and steady path to the moon can offer Ispace some long-term advantages. 'What is good about this four- or five-month trajectory is, every day, there are small things that happen … something we didn't expect,' Ispace Chief Financial Officer Jumpei Nozaki told CNN in January. 'This (journey to the moon) is really a learning phase.' Three teams of Ispace employees have been rotating in and out of the company's mission control room in Tokyo, racking up months' worth of practice in overseeing the unpredictable and daring physics of deep-space travel — a rare opportunity, the company's founder and CEO, Takeshi Hakamada, told CNN. Such a gradual approach to the moon does not, however, guarantee landing success. Ispace's first attempt to put a spacecraft on the lunar surface ended with a crash landing in April 2023 after a 4 ½-month journey from Earth. Ultimately, Resilience's long trajectory offers Ispace both pros and cons. Resilience is on a path to the moon that's often referred to as a low-energy transfer. It's essentially a slow, cruising route — much like traveling to a friend's house on a bike and coasting on the downhills, using little fuel or energy. On such a path, the Resilience lander travels for hundreds of thousands of miles, soaring into deep space and waiting for the moon's gravity to naturally capture the spacecraft into lunar orbit. In contrast, other vehicles such as Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost and the Nova-C lander, developed by Texas-based company Intuitive Machines, have used large engines to fire themselves on a much more direct path. Intuitive Machines' latest Nova-C lander, for example, reached the moon about a week after takeoff. Compared with lunar landers developed by Ispace's competitors, Resilience is lightweight and relatively cheap with a smaller rocket engine. All the time Resilience spends in orbit allows mission operators to 'verify many kinds of systems during this long journey,' such as the vehicle's sensors, navigation and other software systems, Nozaki said. But there are downsides, too. And Nozaki said that, no matter the outcome of Resilience's trip, Ispace will abandon the low-energy transfer approach with its third mission. Ispace's upcoming lunar lander, called Apex 1.0, will be flown in partnership with Massachusetts-based company Draper, under CLPS for the Artemis program, with the aim of taking a more direct route to the moon. Reaching the moon quickly is also 'really important for our customers,' Nozaki said. These clients include research groups, companies and governments that pay Ispace to fly cargo such as science instruments on board the lunar lander. Spending months in transit can put extra wear on instruments as they are exposed to the intense radiation environment and wild temperature swings of space before they begin operating on the lunar surface, according to Ispace. Still, the company is hopeful a group of three science instruments currently on board Resilience will carry out exciting tests after the vehicle reaches the moon on Thursday. Resilience is carrying a module designed to test algae-based food production, a deep-space radiation monitor and a water electrolyzer experiment, which is a device that aims to generate hydrogen and oxygen in the lunar environment. Ispace's first lunar lander was descending toward the Atlas crater, a feature on the northeast side of the moon's near face, when it crashed in April 2023. This go-around, the company is aiming to land in a different lunar location: a 750-mile-long (1,200-kilometer) plain called Mare Frigoris — or the 'Sea of Cold' — which lies in the moon's far northern reaches. Mare Frigoris is significantly flatter than the Atlas crater region, potentially offering easier-to-navigate terrain. Ispace said in a statement that the new landing site was chosen because it offers 'flexibility.' The company plans to livestream Thursday's touchdown attempt on YouTube and X. If Resilience lands upright, Ispace will become the first commercial company outside of the US to pull off such a feat. Ispace would also join Firefly, whose Blue Ghost lander made a pristine landing in March, in becoming the only two companies to complete a fully successful touchdown of a robotic lunar lander. Intuitive Machines has landed two vehicles on the moon, both in the vicinity of the lunar south pole. Each of those spacecraft landed on its side, however, limiting the science and research the company could carry out. Both Firefly Aerospace and Intuitive Machines are contractors for NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services, or CLPS, initiative, which is part of the space agency's Artemis program — a framework under which NASA plans to return humans to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years. Robotic missions carried out under CLPS are meant to serve as scientific pathfinders, paving the way for astronauts' return.
