The Washington Post previously reported that the Japanese firm ispace lost touch with its lunar lander, which led to the failure of what would have been the first private Moon landing. Engineers discovered that they could no longer connect with the Hakuto-R Mission 1 lander as it drew nearer to the Moon’s surface.
During a broadcast of the expedition, ispace CEO Takeshi Hakamada stated, “At this time, we have not confirmed communications from the lander.” We must thus infer that we were unable to finish the landing.
Last December, ispace used SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket to launch its Hakuto-R lander from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Before it was scheduled to touchdown on the Moon on Tuesday, the lander set off on a three-month trek to reach lunar orbit. Up until the projected 12:40 PM ET touchdown, when engineers received no response from the spacecraft, everything appeared to be proceeding according to plan.
Following the webcast, ispace said, “Our engineers and mission operations specialists in our MCC [mission control centre] are currently working to confirm the current status of the lander.” In the livestream ispace mentioned that “As it becomes available, additional information on the status of the lander will be announced.”
A four-wheeled moon rover from the United Arab Emirates and a miniature Star Wars-style rover created by Sony and the Japanese toymaker Tomy were both aboard the Hakuto-R. The Hiten spacecraft made a round around the Moon in 1990 while collecting data on cosmic dust, while Japan’s national space agencies have yet to undertake a Moon landing. With the launch of the significantly delayed Smart Lander for Investigating Moon later this year, the nation will seek to land an undamaged spacecraft on the Moon once more.
Check out the complete footage of the landing and MCC response on losing control over the spacecraft.
