In a botched attempt to land its first freight mission on the moon on Tuesday, the Japanese lunar exploration firm ispace lost contact with the spacecraft.
Takeshi Hakamada, CEO of the company, stated in a statement from Tokyo, Japan, “We are very proud of the fact that we have achieved many things during this Mission 1.”
Without any passengers, the company’s voyage carried scientific data and other cargo.
CEO Takeshi Hakamada of the Japanese lunar exploration business ispace said on Tuesday that the company attempted to land its first cargo mission on the moon but lost contact with the spacecraft and judged the operation a failure.
Speaking from Tokyo, Japan, Hakamada stated, “We have not been able to confirm a successful landing on the lunar surface.”
Hakamada continued, “We are very proud of the fact that we have accomplished many things during this Mission 1.” “We won’t give up on our mission to the moon.
Around 12:40 p.m. ET, the Mission 1 lunar lander from the Tokyo-based business was planned to gently touch down in the Atlas Crater, which is located in the moon’s northeastern region. Unmanned mission of the company carried scientific payloads and other payloads. On board, there were no passengers.
Ispace would have been the first private organization to accomplish the feat after the landing. However, Hakamada observed that the business lost contact with the lander at “the very end” of the landing attempt and was unable to make contact again. The problem is being looked into by the company’s personnel.
“We have to assume that we could not complete the landing on the lunar surface,” Hakamada said.
Ispace was first a Google Lunar Xprize team called Hakuto, named for a mythical Japanese white rabbit, that was established more than ten years ago. Hakamada recently stated that once the Xprize competition was abandoned, ispace changed course and broadened its objectives, with the aim of developing “an economically viable ecosystem” around the moon.
With more than 200 workers worldwide, including around 50 at its American affiliate in Denver, the organization has steadily expanded as it worked toward completing this initial mission. Additionally, ispace has consistently raised capital from a broad range of investors, and to date has raised $237 million through a combination of equity and debt. The Development Bank of Japan, Suzuki Motor, Japan Airlines, and Airbus Ventures are some of the investors in ispace.
Small rovers and payloads for a number of government organizations and businesses, including those from the United States, Canada, Japan, and the United Arab Emirates, were carried by the ispace Mission 1 lander.
Ispace established 10 goals for the mission before the launch. Prior to Tuesday, the corporation had achieved eight milestones, the ninth of which was a successful soft landing on the surface, and the tenth of which was the installation of reliable connection with the Earth and a continuous power supply.
The milestones show the intricacy and difficulty of ispace’s mission, which attempts to accomplish a task that has only historically been performed by superpowers on a worldwide scale. In April 2019, an attempt to land a prior private lunar mission, launched by the Israeli charity SpaceIL and similarly inspired by the Google Lunar Xprize, crashed into the lunar surface.
This was intended to be the first of several moon expeditions, according to the firm. As part of a team led by the Massachusetts-based Draper, ispace received a $73 million NASA contract last year to deliver freight to the moon’s surface in 2025 as part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program.
