Japanese startup fails in moon landing again

Tokyo (Jiji Press) — Japanese startup ispace Inc. said Friday that a lunar probe developed by the company has failed in a moon landing again.

The vehicle was scheduled to land on the moon shortly past 4 a.m. Friday Japan time, but communication with the lander was disrupted immediately before the planned landing, ispace said.

“It is currently assumed that the lander likely performed a hard landing on the lunar surface,” it said in a statement.

The second lunar lander of ispace was launched on Jan. 15 on the Falcon 9 rocket of U.S. spacecraft manufacturer SpaceX. The Japanese company aimed to be the first private Asian firm to succeed in lunar landing. The firm’s first lunar lander failed in its landing attempt after it was launched in December 2022.

According to ispace, the second lander started to slow down by engaging reverse thrust for landing, but it could not reduce speed sufficiently due to a delay in measuring the distance to the moon surface.

“It’s reasonable to think that it crashed into the lunar surface,” Takeshi Hakamada, CEO of ispace, said at a press conference in Tokyo. “It’s important to use the result for our next attempt.”

If the landing had been successful, the company was to take sand from the moon and conduct the world’s first international commercial transaction for lunar samples in which the ownership of the sand would have been transferred to NASA for a fee.

The lander was carrying experimental equipment of Japan’s Takasago Thermal Engineering Co. and others.