Takeshi Hakamada, CEO of Ispace Inc
TOKYO, April 26 (NNN-KYODO) — A Japanese space startup’s Moon lander apparently failed in the process of touching down Wednesday as the vessel fell out of contact with the developer, dashing its hopes of becoming the first private company in the world to reach the lunar surface successfully.
The Ispace Inc. spacecraft, which carried a rover from the United Arab Emirates along with other payloads, was launched aboard a rocket developed by U.S. firm SpaceX in December.
“Now we lost the communication. So we have to assume that….we could not complete the landing on the lunar surface,” Takeshi Hakamada, CEO of the Tokyo-based company, told a live broadcast event.
The landing, if it had gone successfully, would also have marked Japan’s first-ever lunar landing. The country’s space agency failed to put the ultra-small space probe Omotenashi on the Moon last year.
The Mission 1 Lander, about 2.3 meters in height and 2.6 meters in width, began descending from about 100 kilometers above the Moon surface at 12:40 a.m. Wednesday, Japan time.
It decelerated in steps from a velocity of some 6,000 km per hour, approaching the Atlas crater in the northeastern quadrant of the Moon, according to the company.
Hakamada said the company was able to keep communication with the lander until the very end of the attempted landing. “That means we acquired actual flight data during the landing phase” and it was a “great achievement for the future missions,” he said.
The lander was carrying seven payloads, including a small transformable robot chiefly developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and toy company Tomy Co.
The company launched the lander as part of the first stage of its Hakuto-R exploration program, hoping to use the technology for lunar surface data collection and cargo transportation services to the Moon.
The lander took off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida in the United States in December. In order to carry less fuel, it took a longer, energy-efficient route to reach the Moon, and at one point in January was almost 1.4 million km away from Earth. — NNN-KYODO