Latest news with #iSpace
ABC News
3 days ago
- Science
- ABC News
Japanese spacecraft crashes during moon-landing
Samantha Donovan: Over the years, many attempts to land a spacecraft on the moon have failed. Japanese company, iSpace, tried to land an uncrewed vessel on the moon two years ago, but it crashed during the landing. Now it appears the company's second attempt has ended the same way. Elizabeth Cramsie has more. Elizabeth Cramsie: If at first you don't succeed, try and try again. It's a useful motto, but for the second time now, Japanese company, iSpace, has failed to land on the moon. Takeshi Hakamada: In conclusion, we have not achieved the landing. So in that regards, you can say we failed. Elizabeth Cramsie: That's Takeshi Hakamada, the CEO and founder of iSpace. Two years ago, iSpace's first attempt ended in failure when its spacecraft crashed into the surface of the moon. This second uncrewed lander was aptly named Resilience. But in a media conference today, Mr Hakamada once again had to apologise to everyone who contributed to the mission. Takeshi Hakamada: This is the second time that we were not able to land. So we really have to take it very seriously. Elizabeth Cramsie: The suspense had been building as the lander approached the moon and prepared to land. Up until that point, the mission had gone well, but communications were lost less than two minutes before the scheduled landing. Ryo Ujiie is the Chief Technology Officer. Ryo Ujiie: Based on the fact that the speed of the lander was not reduced enough, I think it's appropriate to think it is crashed. Elizabeth Cramsie: Associate Professor Alice Gorman is from Flinders University in Adelaide. Alice Gorman: I'm very sorry that they weren't successful. It would have been an amazing mission. But what we have to keep in mind, I think, is that in some ways failure is more common than success on the moon. Elizabeth Cramsie: She says while moon landings have been achieved before, they haven't gotten any less difficult. Alice Gorman: People remember the successes like the Apollo missions. They don't remember the failures. And with the Apollo missions, I think we were extremely fortunate. So the President of the United States had speeches prepared if the astronauts all died. That was the real possibility. And they didn't, and that's extremely fortunate. But then there was a period after Apollo of about 50 years where people just weren't sending missions to the moon. So a lot of that continuity of knowledge was lost. Elizabeth Cramsie: She says there's multiple challenges in a moon landing and it's more difficult than other planets. Alice Gorman: There's no atmosphere. But what that means is that a spacecraft can't use parachutes to slow its speed down when it's coming out of orbit. It has to rely on engines. In the case of the iSpace lander, the information it was getting about its distance from the surface wasn't happening fast enough. So it's kind of out of sync with the little rocket thrusters. So it just went, poof, down it went. There's no air to slow it down. Elizabeth Cramsie: Professor Gorman says every crash is a learning opportunity. Alice Gorman: You learn something about your systems, your engineering. You learn something about the lunar surface, the lunar atmosphere. So it's not entirely useless. It's just not what people were hoping for. Samantha Donovan: That's Associate Professor Alice Gorman from Flinders University, Elizabeth Cramsie, reporting.
&w=3840&q=100)
First Post
3 days ago
- Business
- First Post
Japan's moon-landing attempt ends in failure, ispace's lander falls silent
Japan's private moon lander launched by Tokyo-based company iSpace crashed while attempting a touchdown on the lunar surface on Friday, marking the latest casualty in the commercial rush to the moon. read more People await the update on ispace's private lunar lander's attempt to touch down on the moon Friday, June 6, 2025, in Tokyo, Japan. AP A private lunar lander from Japan crashed while attempting a touchdown Friday, the latest casualty in the commercial rush to the moon. The Tokyo-based company ispace declared the mission a failure several hours after communication was lost with the lander. Flight controllers scrambled to gain contact, but were met with only silence and said they were concluding the mission. Communications ceased less than two minutes before the spacecraft's scheduled landing on the moon with a mini rover. Until then, the descent from lunar orbit seemed to be going well. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD CEO and founder Takeshi Hakamada apologised to everyone who contributed to the mission, the second lunar strikeout for Ispace. Two years ago, the company's first moonshot ended in a crash landing, giving rise to the name 'Resilience' for its successor lander. 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. Company officials said it was too soon to know whether the same problem doomed both missions. 'This is the second time that we were not able to land. So we really have to take it very seriously,' Hakamada told reporters. He stressed that the company would press ahead with more lunar missions. A preliminary analysis indicates 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. Long the province of governments, the moon became a target of private outfits in 2019, with more flops than wins along the way. Launched in January from Florida on a long, roundabout journey, Resilience entered lunar orbit last month. It shared a SpaceX ride with Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost, which reached the moon faster and became the first private entity to successfully land there in March. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Another U.S. company, Intuitive Machines, arrived at the moon a few days after Firefly. But the tall, spindly lander face-planted in a crater near the moon's south pole and was declared dead within hours. Resilience was targeting the top of the moon, a less treacherous place than the shadowy bottom. The ispace team chose a flat area with few boulders in Mare Frigoris or Sea of Cold, a long and narrow region full of craters and ancient lava flows that stretches across the near side's northern tier. Plans had called for the 7.5-foot (2.3-meter) Resilience to beam back pictures within hours and for the lander to lower the piggybacking rover onto the lunar surface this weekend. Made of carbon fiber-reinforced plastic with four wheels, ispace's European-built rover — named Tenacious — sported a high-definition camera to scout out the area and a shovel to scoop up some lunar dirt for NASA. The rover, weighing just 11 pounds (5 kilograms), was going to stick close to the lander, going in circles at a speed of less than one inch (a couple centimeters) per second. It was capable of venturing up to two-thirds of a mile (1 kilometer) from the lander and should be operational throughout the two-week mission, the period of daylight. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Besides science and tech experiments, there was an artistic touch. The rover held a tiny, Swedish-style red cottage with white trim and a green door, dubbed the Moonhouse by creator Mikael Genberg, for placement on the lunar surface. Minutes before the attempted landing, Hakamada assured everyone that ispace had learned from its first failed mission. 'Engineers did everything they possibly could' to ensure success this time, he said. He considered the latest moonshot 'merely a stepping stone' to its bigger lander launching by 2027 with NASA involvement. Ispace, like other businesses, does not have 'infinite funds' and cannot afford repeated failures, Jeremy Fix, chief engineer for ispace's U.S. subsidiary, said at a conference last month. While not divulging the cost of the current mission, company officials said it's less than the first one, which exceeded $100 million. Two other U.S. companies are aiming for moon landings by year's end: Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Astrobotic Technology. Astrobotic's first lunar lander missed the moon altogether in 2024 and came crashing back through Earth's atmosphere. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD For decades, governments competed to get to the moon. Only five countries have pulled off successful robotic lunar landings: Russia, the U.S., China, India and Japan. Of those, only the U.S. has landed people on the moon: 12 NASA astronauts from 1969 through 1972. NASA expects to send four astronauts around the moon next year. That would be followed a year or more later by the first lunar landing by a crew in more than a century, with SpaceX's Starship providing the lift from lunar orbit all the way down to the surface. China also has moon landing plans for its own astronauts by 2030.
