After hours of no contact, a private Japanese company announced that its lunar lander had crashed into the moon. iSpace confirmed that the lunar landing mission had failed.
Private firm ispace attempted to remotely land its Resilience module on the moon on Thursday afternoon, but confirmed later in the evening that based on the lander's trajectory and speed before touchdown, it had likely crashed.
“As a result, the lander was unable to slow down sufficiently to achieve the desired speed for the planned landing on the Moon,” the company explained. “Based on the data, it is currently believed that the lander likely made a hard landing on the lunar surface.”
The company based its conclusions on information collected by the laser rangefinder. Data sent to mission controllers was delayed longer than expected, indicating a malfunction in Resilience.
iSpace attempted a lunar landing at 3:17 a.m. ET, but contact was lost shortly before touchdown.
iSpace US chairman and former NASA astronaut Ron Garan told CNN that the mission was proceeding as planned until contact with the module was lost just before landing on the moon.
“I don't see telemetry,” Garan said, “but I get updates on my phone [and] everything is fine.”
He added that it is very difficult for private aerospace companies to develop the technologies needed to successfully land a module on the Moon.
“The reason we do this is because we want to learn,” Garan said.
Resilience was planned to land in the Mare Figoris region, located on the near side of the Moon's northern hemisphere.
The lander stands about 7.5 feet tall and is equipped with a four-wheeled rover called Tenacious to explore the unexplored northern part of the Moon.
The rover has a high-quality camera and a shovel to collect lunar soil samples for NASA. The rover weighs about 11 pounds.
Also on board is a small red house, which its creator Michael Genberg called the Moon House, and which the rover planned to install on the surface of the Moon.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the iSpace lander to the Moon on January 15, along with the privately owned Blue Ghost lunar module developed by Firefly Aerospace, Space.com reports.
On March 2, the Blue Ghost spacecraft landed in the Mare Crisium region of the Moon.
The Resilience mission took significantly longer to reach the Moon due to the low-energy path iSpace chose for its lander, which entered lunar orbit on May 6.
The live stream is in English, but another live stream in Japanese is also available.
A similar mission by iSpace in April 2023 ended in failure when its unmanned lander crashed while attempting to land in the lunar Atlas crater. It was iSpace's first attempt to land a lander on the moon.
According to ABC News, the mission is part of iSpace's plan to colonize the Moon and make it habitable by humans by 2040.
A private aerospace company plans to create a city that can accommodate 1,000 people and thousands of tourists.
ispace also plans to send a much larger lander to the moon with the help of NASA, with the mission scheduled to launch in 2027.
This story continues to develop. Stay tuned for updates.
Sourse: www.upi.com
